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WORSHIP 

IN THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 

A Study in the Theory and Practice 
of Worship 

BY 
HUGH HARTSHORNE 



Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for 

the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, in the Faculty 

of Philosophy, Columbia University 



PUBLISHED BY 

tEeacfjerfli College, Columbia ©taiberaitp 

NEW YORK CITY 

1913 



WORSHIP 
IN THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 

A Study in the Theory and Practice 
of Worship 

BY 
HUGH HARTSHORNE 



Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for 

the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, in the Faculty 

of Philosophy, Columbia University 



PUBLISHED BY 

'€tat\)tv$ College, Columbia ©tatberaitp 
NEW YORK CITY 

1913 



I a* 






Copyright, 1913, by Hugh Hartshorne 






To 
MY FATHER 

AND 

MY MOTHER 



FOREWORD AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 

The problems of religious education are thrusting 
themselves as never before upon the attention of 
the American people. The Sunday school is coming 
to take its rightful place in the central stronghold 
of the church's life. Largely through the efficient 
campaigning of the Religious Education Association, 
the principles for the construction and teaching 
of Sunday-school curricula have been thoroughly 
overhauled and restated in accordance with modern 
educational ideas and practices. In the classes 
pupils are really being taught a great deal about the 
Bible, about the heroes of history, about the mean- 
ing of life, of religion, of Christianity, about right 
conduct in social relations. But the service of wor- 
ship has not yet been taken up into this movement 
of criticism and reconstruction. It still stands 
detached, ineffective, contributing little or nothing 
to the central purpose of religious education. It is 
therefore hoped that this short study of Worship 
in the Sunday School may serve at least to make 
clear the need of investigation and experiment in 
this field. 

The attempt is made to define the purpose of Sun- 
day-school worship in terms of social relationships 
and attitudes. With such a purpose in mind, the 
place of feeling in the experience of worship is made 
prominent, and two chapters are therefore devoted 



vi Worship in the Sunday School 

to a discussion of the psychology of feeling in its 
relation to education, to worship and to experience 
as a whole. Then follows a description of the method 
by which services can be planned and conducted 
in such a way as to accomplish the educational 
purposes of worship. Finally a method of securing 
evidence of the effects of such services on the pupils 
is proposed, and the results of an actual experiment 
in worship are presented. And thus the conclusion 
is reached that, with a well-defined purpose and 
with due attention to the nature of feeling, the 
service of worship in the Sunday school can really 
be made both an efficient educational instrument 
and a means of training in the experience of worship 
itself, which is so necessary to the vitality of the 
religious life. 

The author gratefully acknowledges his indebted- 
ness to Professor George Albert Coe, under whose 
constant and careful guidance the following chapters 
have been written. Without his generous assist- 
ance at every stage of the work, this brief discussion 
of Worship in the Sunday School could not have been 
carried through. In those aspects of the subject 
which involve a definite point of view regarding 
general educational theory, the author feels especially 
under obligation to Professor John Angus Mac- 
Vannel, who has been a never failing source of in- 
spiration. From Professor Edward Lee Thorndike 
come most of the ideas on educational psychology 
here expressed. The members of the Staff of the 
Union School of Religion, in fulfilling ably their regu- 



Foreword and Acknowledgments vii 

lar duties in connection with the work of the School, 
have provided much of the material for this study. 
The author therefore feels under personal obliga- 
tion to them all, and takes this opportunity to 
express his appreciation of their cordial interest in 
the conduct of the services. Besides such acknowl- 
edgments as are made in the text, there is a host of 
friends and teachers to whom the writer owes more 
than can ever be known. To them also he is deeply 
grateful. 

H. H. 
New York City 
June 1, 1913 



CONTENTS 



Page 



CHAPTER I 
Introduction ........ 1 

CHAPTER II 

The Social Function of Worship .... 9 

CHAPTER III 

The Neglect of Worship in the Sunday School . 28 

CHAPTER IV 

The Purpose of Worship in the Sunday School . 44 

CHAPTER V 

The Nature of Feeling, and the Place of Feeling 

in Education ....... 59 

CHAPTER VI 

The Place of Feeling in Worship . . . .110 

CHAPTER VII 

An Experiment in Sunday-School Worship . . 133 

CHAPTER VIII 

Evidences of the Results of Worship . . . 160 

CHAPTER IX 

Conclusions : Guiding Principles for the Planning 

and Conduct of Sunday-School Worship . . 199 

Bibliography ........ 204 



CHAPTER I 
INTRODUCTION 

All the forces of social uplift and individual in- 
spiration are the obvious concern of every one who 
claims the privilege of leading men Godward along 
the path of normal religious growth. 1 America, so 
long the land of risk and cure, is becoming the land 
of prophylaxis. The spirit of prevention has its 
religious and educational embodiment in the en- 
lightened instruction of the child. The Christian 
God is no less compassionate in preventing than he 
is in forgiving sin. Indeed, have they not most 
need of forgiveness who, by sheer neglect of avail- 
able knowledge, have let their children grow up in 
unhappy ignorance, hoping that a gracious God will 
mend the vessels they have marred in making? 

There is a ministry of evangelism and a ministry 
of education; but it is the failure of the latter which 
gives occasion for the first. The true regeneration of 
society will never come until every child is led into 
the light of Christian manhood or womanhood, not 
by the path of moral or physical wreck or danger, 
but through the natural upbuilding and unfolding 
of a glad, free life, guided and inspired by the love 
of those who are privileged to be his teachers. 

1. For an account of such forces, see the "Annual Survey of Progress 
in Religious and Moral Education," for 1913, by H. F. Cope, General Secre- 
tary of the Religious Education Association. 



% Worship in the Sunday School 

The significance of childhood in education has 
been more or less dimly realized from prehistoric 
times, but it is only recently that men have tried 
consciously to shape the life of the child so that what 
it thinks and does shall be brought into harmony with 
social needs. We no longer trust to a blind chance 
to bring the wayward boy to sober maturity, or the 
scatter-brained girl to the dignity of efficient woman- 
hood. Instincts and desires and tendencies, it is 
found, do not educate without the appropriate 
materials for their satisfaction. Nor is it enough 
that there should be materials without instincts. 
We do not expect appetite to sustain health when 
there is no food to satisfy it; nor will the finest bread 
in the world keep alive a man who is dying of thirst. 
The teacher must know the pupil. He must know 
how his mind expands, unfolding first in one direc- 
tion, then in another, much as the plant grows leaf 
and flower and fruit. What will the child do if let 
alone, and what can he be led to do if aided? What 
contribution to world history does society demand 
of him? What must be offered him as the materials 
out of which he is to construct a life, and how and 
with what effect are these means to be applied? 
Such questions as these we have come to ask re- 
garding general education, with the result that our 
whole educational system is being transformed, in- 
deed, revolutionized. 1 

The social Significance of education is twofold. 

1. Compare Thorndike, Education; Cubberley, Changing Conceptions of 
Education. 



Introduction 3 

It looks backward over the experience of the race 
and seeks to embody in the rising generation what 
has been found of value. To use President Butler's 
phrase, education is "a gradual adjustment to the 
spiritual possessions of the race. . . . The child 
is entitled to his scientific inheritance, to his liter- 
ary inheritance, to his aesthetic inheritance, to his 
institutional inheritance, and to his religious in- 
heritance." l While individual in standpoint, this 
sentence gives the basis of social control, as a con- 
servative influence — conservative, that i&, of all 
that is good in the past. By such a process each 
generation is brought under the control of the domi- 
nant motives and ideals and methods of society. It 
is social control, not through the exercise of politi- 
cal or police power, not through emotional appeal 
in oratory and crowd movements, but through the 
early formation of habits that correspond to the 
demands of the prevailing social mores. 

From the other point of view, education may be 
thought of as a means of social progress and devel- 
opment. As Davidson puts it, "Education is con- 
scious or voluntary evolution." And so far as 
evolution is conscious, it has a forward look. 
There is an adjustment to the future as well as to 
the present and the past. The inherited culture of 
the race becomes a means to higher racial culture 
consciously to be achieved, instead of an end merely 
of individual endeavor. That we have discovered 
the method of organic evolution does not imply 

1. Butler, The Meaning of Education, p. 17. 



4 Worship in the Sunday School 

that we are helplessly within the grip of mechanical 
powers and can do nothing to hasten or retard the 
slow and stately progress of the race. Rather does 
the discovery that we are within a process whose 
method is understood give us a means of control 
over the process itself. We may use the method of 
evolution to accomplish the social purposes which 
we have consciously set before us. And this method, 
as Davidson 1 says, is realized in education, which, 
by control of present conditions, achieves an adjust- 
ment to the conditions of the life to be. 

All education is concerned with the individual's 
social efficiency and with his own satisfaction or 
richness of life — with conduct and appreciation. 
The individual and society are correlative, each the 
condition of the other and each the end of the other's 
life. The past, present and future individuals, who 
are in an eternal and ideal as well as an actual and 
temporal association, are the only conceivable objects 
of educational theory or ethical interest. Yet the in- 
dividual, thought of apart from society, is an abstrac- 
tion. When we deal with men, women and children 
we must think of them not as isolated, but as in some 
relation. The individual has been called a nucleus of 
relations. General educational theory recognizes the 
interdependence of men, and emphasizes their present 
relationships and duties as members of the State. Re- 
ligious educational theory adds the conception of their 
mutual dependence on God and emphasizes their eter- 

1. Davidson, A History of Education, p. 1. Cf. MacVannel, Outline 
of a Course in the Philosophy of Education, pp. 3, 4, 28, 43 ff ., etc. 



Introduction 5 

nal relationships and privileges as children of God. 
There is no absolute line of division between these 
positions. Both recognize that the individual as an 
end is gained through the individual as a means. 

Indeed, the conflict between self and others, be- 
tween pleasure and duty, is largely administrative, 
when one's view of life is dynamic. The educationist 
asks how he can produce the most perfect individual. 
And the answer is that the most perfect individual 
is produced only by his own activity in social re- 
lations; that efficiency in certain kinds of social 
conduct is one method of gaining and one method 
of judging character. He sees that in proportion 
as this conduct is socially directed and centered in 
the good of others, the individual grows toward 
the ideal character and is rewarded by satisfaction. 
It is the aim, therefore, of the educator, first, to get 
this conduct out of the individual, and, second, to 
make it deliberate, that is, ethical. He strengthens 
the social interest and inhibits the self-interest, in 
order that the child may gain that highest self- 
development which is the end and aim of life. 1 

The conscious aim of the individual must there- 
fore be the service of all, the ideal of brotherliness. 
And this, in Christian ethics, is identified with the 
highest satisfaction. One can start from either end 
of the line, — but if he would save his life, he knows 
he must lose it; and if he lose his life, he knows he 
will save it. The reward of service is sonship. 

1. Cf. Dewey and Tufts, Ethics, pp. 391-397; MacVannel, op. cit., Chap. 
VIII. 



6 Worship in the Sunday School 

The key to the proper balance between the tend- 
ency to "socialize" and the tendency to "individual- 
ize" lies in the word "freedom. " The freeing of the 
individual consists in making habit his tool and not 
his master. He must be given the power to gain 
consciously chosen purposes, to organize his experi- 
ence, not around external rules imposed from with- 
out, but around the values of life which he himself 
has weighed and selected. Education must give 
habits, but it must also cultivate attitudes. It 
must create the capacity to react with a fine sense of 
appreciation to all the intricacies of social relation- 
ship. Indeed, it is the attitude of a man which we 
most value. His acts give evidence of his sympathy, 
but it is his desire to sympathize that most comforts 
us. The act becomes for us the symbol of the atti- 
tude. So-called secular education seeks, among 
other things, to develop social attitudes needful in 
the relationships of men, in business, politics, recrea- 
tion. Religious education, if it be Christian, strives 
for the cultivation of Christian attitudes. It makes 
for the growth of the broadest possible outlook on 
life. It is interested primarily in the associations 
which are permanent and universal, and it thinks of 
the individuals so associated as members of a perma- 
nent and universal family — the children of God. 

In this country it is in the School of the Church 
that systematic religious education, of a public 
nature, is to take place. It is here that Christian 
attitudes must be developed, Christian purposes 
formed and the necessary habits acquired. The 



Introduction 7 

day school gives twenty -five hours a week to its 
task. The Sunday school gives an hour and a half, 
or less. It is an important problem, therefore, to 
discover how this time can be most effectively used. 
The discussion which follows is an attempt to show 
how the assembly of the school, short and infrequent 
as it is, can become an effective instrument for the 
training of children in Christian attitudes and in 
Christian worship. 

It is thus suggested that one function of the School 
of the Church, as an institution for Christian edu- 
cation, is to control its pupils so as to develop within 
them Christian attitudes. The next chapter at- 
tempts to show how worship, in the course of his- 
tory, has come to be: A means by which a leader 
controls a group in such a way as to develop attitudes 
of social value; and an experience within which the 
members of the group may realize the largest social 
fellowship. Chapter III then points out how, in 
spite of the social and religious importance of wor- 
ship, the significance of the Sunday-school service 
for religious education has not been generally recog- 
nized. In Chapter IV, the purpose of the Sunday- 
school service is made definite in terms of certain 
specific attitudes to be developed through efficiently 
controlled worship. This brings up the problem 
of the psychology of feeling. Chapters V and VI, 
therefore, indicate in a general way what the nature 
of feeling is and what place it occupies in education 
and in the experience of worship. The way in which 
services have been constructed and carried out in 



8 Worship in the Sunday School 

accordance with the purposes and methods so far 
suggested is shown in Chapter VII. In Chapter VIII 
a few indications of the effects of these services are 
given, while Chapter IX attempts to formulate 
the results of the whole discussion in a few guiding 
principles for the planning and conduct of worship 
in the Sunday school. 



CHAPTER II 
THE SOCIAL FUNCTION OF WORSHIP 

The origin of ritualistic practices is manifold. 
They have their roots in the primitive impulses and 
needs. The original springs of human activity supply 
the substance, as the environing conditions supply 
the forms of religious observances. 1 Food, sex, 
defense and play all contribute motifs for the ac- 
cumulation of those social customs which we term 
ritualistic. But the form which these customs take 
is largely determined by the circumstances of human 
existence. The much quoted case of the Todas 2 
of southern India shows how the prevailing way of 
satisfying the need for food through the raising of 
buffalo and the extensive use of milk products has 
given form to most of their ceremonials. In contrast 
with this, the ritual of the North American Hopis, 3 
who live on the desert near the Grand Canon, is 
concerned with the interests of desert life — the rais- 
ing of grain, the coming of the rainy season, and so 
on. Describing a rain-making ceremony among the 
Zunis of the South West, J. G. Frazer says, in part: 4 

1. Ames, E. S., Psychology of Religious Experience, Chap. III. 

2. Rivers, The Todas. 

3. Frazer, J. G., Totemism and Exogamy, Vol. Ill, p. 229, with bibliog- 
raphy. 

4. Op. cit., p. 235 ff. 

9 



10 Worship in the Sunday School 

"Each of the priests possesses certain fetishes, or sacred instru- 
ments, which he uses in his professional business. They are hol- 
low reeds, some filled with water and others with edible seeds of 
all the kinds known to the Zunis. In one of the water-filled reeds 
there is kept a small toad which seems to thrive in its cramped 
quarters. . . . 

"At a rain-making ceremony in winter the priest draws a pic- 
ture of a cloud with pollen and meal on the ground and places the 
water-filled and seed-filled reeds on the picture. This is the most 
solemn part of the ceremony; the hearts and minds of all concerned 
are now filled with adoring wonder at these holiest of fetishes and 
with a trembling hope that the gods will thus be moved to water 
the earth. It is a supreme moment to the Zunis and has been 
compared by an eyewitness to the administration of the Holy 
Eucharist in the Catholic Church. Afterwards the priest with 
the assistance of a female associate consecrates a mixture of water, 
meal and a powdered root in a bowl, and standing up whirls a bull- 
roarer, while the associate whips the contents of the bowl into 
frothy suds symbolic of clouds, and another associate plays the 
flute. . . . Next the priest, laying aside the bull-roarer, dips 
two eagle feathers in the holy water and with it sprinkles the 
offerings. All night long the appeal to the gods is crooned in low, 
weird, yet musical tones." 

But varied as are the origins and forms of ritualis- 
tic practices, they are alike in this, that they are all 
maintained for some more or less definite purpose. 
This purpose naturally varies with the conditions of 
existence, but the fact of practical intention, how- 
ever hazy it may be, is always present. The cere- 
mony may take the form of an actual participation 
in the practical process itself, as in the cases just 
mentioned. 1 Or it may be for the purpose of re- 

1. Cf. also Sumner, Folkways, p. 123; Henke, F. G., A Study in the Psy- 
chology of Ritualism, p. 10. 



The Social Function of Worship 11 

moving some social taboo or overcoming "negative 
magic"; 1 or for overcoming distinctions which have 
grown up between the sacred and the secular, and 
so providing for intimate association with the sacred; 2 
or it may be used in an educational way in initiatory 
rites, to inculcate the tribal mores in the proper 
emotional setting, 3 and so on. 

Recent authors seem to have established the 
theory that religion and religious practices have 
grown up within and have emerged from the evolv- 
ing social consciousness. The impulses which make 
a man religious are of course inherited, just as is 
his physique, but the form which his religious con- 
sciousness takes is moulded by the situations, physi- 
cal and social, with which he has to deal from his 
childhood up. The steps in the development of re- 
ligious practices can, for the most part, be referred 
to changes in the social matrix. And these changes, 
further, are due to the enlargement of a socially 
conserved experience, which is the product of the 
interaction between a changing environment and 
new, as well as changing, individual minds. Cere- 
mony is a social reaction in a double sense. It is a 
group custom, and therefore prescribed for the indi- 
vidual; and it also has reference to other minds with 
which the worshiper is or is conceived to be in some 
relation. 

In working out this theory of the social origin of 
religious practices, the place of the individual has 

1. Ames, op. cit., pp. 88 ff- 

2. Durkheim, Les Formes Elementaires de la Vie Religieuse, pp. 440 ff. 

3. Durkheim, op. cit., pp. 465 ff. 



12 Worship in the Sunday School 

perhaps been under-emphasized. 1 The social con- 
sciousness seems sometimes to be given an almost 
personified significance, as though it could exist 
per se, somewhere else than in the individual mind. 
Rather must we refer back to the contents of the 
individual consciousness for an explanation of every 
change in the social consciousness. All variations, 
whether of body or mind, are in the first place varia- 
tions of the individual, and may be by heredity or 
communication transferred to other individuals. 
Back of every custom and every change in custom 
stands the variant individual. But it may be here 
objected that, although individuals may be a deter- 
mining factor in the birth of custom, yet no custom 
at its birth is religious. Rather must it acquire 
a social value, and by habit become associated with 
the furtherance of some social end, before it can be 
called religious; 2 and by that time the individual's 
initiating influence is lost in the greater force of 
social pressure. It is not to be supposed, however, 
that there is a certain stage in which there is only 
social custom, and then a later stage in which some 

1. Irving King, for example, in The Development of Religion, Chap. V, 
in dealing with "The Origin of Religious Practices," is so intent on pointing 
out the social origin of ceremonials that the contribution of the individual 
is overlooked. 

2. The following sentences from King, op. cit., p. 82, may suggest how 
this takes place. "Thus of the Hurons we are told, '"their remedies for 
diseases; their greatest amusements when in good health; their fishing, their 
hunting and their trading ; the success of their crops, of their wars, of their 
council; almost all abound in diabolical ceremonies." . . .' 

"In all such cases, the religious practices, as they are called, are hardly 
above the level of practical expedients. Perhaps one reason why these 
simple ceremonies have been regarded as religious has been that they are 
quite like the genuine religious practices of a later stage of development. 
As certain of these values stand out and acquire greater prominence in the 
social consciousness, they become in so far religious, and the activities, 
which were before only practical expedients, are now transformed into re- 
ligious ceremonials." 



The Social Function of Worship 13 

customs have been transformed into rites. It would 
hardly do to say that at any stage there were no 
customs which had become religious rites. The proc- 
ess of raising customs to the level of religious prac- 
tice and the process of forming new customs go on 
at the same time. The new customs are ever furnish- 
ing material for the elaboration of rites. But how 
is this material selected? The variant individual 
must be the originating factor in this selection. He 
who holds the secrets of the mysteries can alone 
open the doors of tradition to welcome the new and 
the different. 

But admitting for a moment the whole weight of 
social pressure as determining the general form of 
the ceremony, there is yet the control of any single in- 
stance of its observance to be accounted for. Where 
there are no calendars, no absolute dates, how can 
the beginning of a rite be fixed upon? Evidently 
some individual — either the religious leader of the 
group, or some one in the group who is more awake 
to the changes of the season, or more responsive to 
the passage of time — must supply the cue. Further, 
many ceremonies are not seasonal or regular at all, 
but have to do with accidental events such as birth, 
death, war, pestilence. Who starts these ceremonies? 
Some one must, and however much a slave to tra- 
dition he may be, yet is he for the time being the 
controlling factor in this ceremony. 1 

This is seen with especial vividness in such prac- 
tices as occur in revivals. Disregarding for the mo- 

1. That some kind of leadership is present is recognized by AmeSt 
op. cit., p. 71, but the significance of leadership is not traced out. 



14 Worship in the Sunday School 

ment the influence of the official leader, we see that 
what "sets the thing off" is some more suggestible 
individual. It is true that he will do what the so- 
cial consciousness expects of him — but the social 
consciousness may provide him with a variety of 
possible reactions. He may start by "speaking in 
tongues," or he may roll on the floor, or he may 
simply pass forward and repeat a formula. Which- 
ever is done first the rest will do, so that, in a real 
sense, some individual may be said to control the 
practice at that moment. 1 

Such control is of course unconscious. It is itself 
a phase of crowd action. But not so the control 
which the leaders of the group exercise. 2 As soon 
as some one individual "comes to himself" and is 
differentiated as a separate personal consciousness, 
so that he can distinguish between his own ends and 
the ends of the group, and hence make consciously 
for the one or the other, then control becomes delib- 
erate. In the case of the revival, the leader has a 
definite aim in mind and he uses such ritual or cus- 

1. Cf. Davenport, F. M., Primitive Traits in Religious Revivals, pp. 
50 ff., 225 ff., Chap. XII. 

2. Le Bon, The Crowd, Book II, Chap. Ill, "The Leaders of Crowds 
and Their Means of Persuasion." Compare also the following from some 
unpublished lectures of G. A. Coe's (paraphrased) : 

4 ' Religion is a group phenomenon, but it is influenced in most important 
ways by the variant individual. In religious societies an individual may be 
important because he either (a) Embodies in especial fulness the present 
lif e interest of the group (Shaman) ; or (b) Sways the group toward one of 
several such interests (Priest) ; or (c) Dissents from present interests or 
customs and modifies them (Prophet). 

' ' The leadership of the Shaman is due to the fact that he relieves emotional 
tension in some crisis by focalizing the group-consciousness, and partly by 
leading to successful action. The leadership of the priest consists chiefly 
in maintaining and developing ceremonies, sacred literatures and education. 
The prophet seeks to return from conventionalized religion or religious 
decay to the source of religion. Ethical group action is sought, and this 
implies transfer of authority from the apparent compulsion of the automatic 
to deliberately approved ideals." 



The Social Function of Worship 15 

tomary religious practices as he thinks will get that 
result. And it is not very different in the case 
of some primitive ceremonial. The medicine man 
wishes to bring rain. He initiates the ceremony 
which is supposed to have rain as its effect. That 
the people also wish rain and want the ceremony 
does not detract from, but only adds to the extent 
of his control — he now holds the key to the satis- 
faction of their wants, and that is the secret of all 
permanent control. 1 

The fact that these practices are prescribed by 
tradition does not exclude the fact that the leader 
may use them for his own ends. This type of 
situation is usually limited to the affairs of a small 
group or even of only one person. It is commonly 
called magic. But it may take on larger proportions, 
and a small coterie of religious leaders may seek their 
own private ends through the control of public 
ritual. 2 To assert that some such private interest 
is involved in the control of ritualism wherever a 
leader is dealing with a "crowd" consciousness 
would need wide proof. That it is sometimes 
present, as the interest of either an individual or a 
single institution, is suggested by reference to some 
of the practices of the Catholic Church, to the work 
of Dowie 3 and Mrs. Eddy, 4 and some of the Mor- 
mon leaders. 

1. Cf. Menzies, History of Religion, pp. 312-313, on the place of the 
priest in Roman ritualism. 

2. Cf. Breasted, J. H., Development of Religious Thought in Ancient 
Egypt, pp. 307 ff., 363 ff. 

3. Cf. John Swain, "John Alexander Dowie; The Prophet and His 
Profits," Century, Vol. 42, p. 933. 

4. Cf. Powell, L. B., Christian Science, pp. 98-107. 



16 Worship in the Sunday School 

As more and more members of the group become 
individualized, leadership must become ethicized, 
and the purposes of the leaders must more and 
more be guided by the ends which the whole group 
consciously sets before itself. At this point wor- 
ship becomes democratized and leadership itself 
becomes a means by which the social will is ex- 
pressed. Control is now truly social and can never 
again become purely individual. But that indi- 
vidual leadership is still needed in some form is a 
fact which grows out of the survival within men of 
the tendency to group themselves about a leader, 
and of the survival in society of forms of worship 
which depend for their observance on the presence 
and participation of a leader of worship. As long 
as worship remains a feature of group activity, it 
must involve some kind of leadership, whether 
independent or accountable to the group. 

After describing the fundamental human im- 
pulses and showing by frequent illustration that 
"ritualism is built upon this native endowment," 
Henke proceeds to point out the place of thinking 
or attention in the formation of rites. It is in the 
shock of some crisis, where habit and blind impulse 
are no longer sufficient for adequate adjustment, 
that attention is born. 1 

The function of attention is to throw the indi- 
vidual back upon his resources, and to give him a 
chance to draw more widely from his experiences. 

1. Henke, op. cit., p. 21. 



The Social Function of Worship 17 

It is at this phase of development that the end sought 
is "brought into consciousness" in the form of an 
idea. When the objects of instinctive endeavor 
are thus made the ends of conscious action, two 
worlds are born — the world of self and the world 
of values. Each individual comes to feel in his 
own consciousness a distinction between himself 
and his surroundings. The self dissatisfied is con- 
trasted with the self conceived as satisfied. Pres- 
ent need or desire is defined in terms of a future 
satisfaction to be gained from the external world. 
When an ideal satisfier is made the object of effort, 
"evaluation" begins as a type of mental action. 1 
Purpose and choice become factors in human de- 
velopment. Certain of these values which are the 
common possession or desire of the group, gather 
around themselves group actions, born of ancient 
custom. Such of these activities as have acquired 
a peculiar significance from their relation to the so- 
cial welfare form the body of religious ceremonial, 
which, in its modern form, is "public worship." The 
development of religious ritual is thus seen to have 
a double aspect — the evolution of values and the 
evolution of practices. 

The factors which enter in to alter forms are 
many. The variation in the individual has already 
been mentioned. As long as thought is uncritical, 
unscientific, these variant forms usually appear as 
additions to or elaborations of the ritual. The 

1. Cf. Coe, "Religious Value," Journ. Phil. Psych. Sci. Meth., Vol. V, 
No. 10, 1908. 
2 



18 Worship in the Sunday School 

development is therefore, in the direction of com- 
plexity, as is illustrated by the religious practices of 
the Hebrews after their settlement in Canaan. 
The consequence of this tendency is to put ritual 
more and more under the control of an individual 
or a special class, whose special function it is to 
know and conserve the accurate forms of worship. 
No change in the social consciousness is needed to 
account for such accretions to the ceremonies. 

But, as Henke has illustrated, 1 there is a close 
relation between changes in the social consciousness 
and the practices of religion. These he divides into 
five classes, and the influence in each case is seen to 
be one of criticism and elimination. (1) Crises; 
for example, transitions from one type of life to 
another. The ceremonies of the nomads fall into 
disrepute when they take up agriculture (The He- 
brew cultus an exception). (2) The religious 
genius actually opposes and reforms current reli- 
gious practices. (3) A great change in fortune — 
calamity or vice versa. (4) The rise of scientific 
explanations and mechanical notions. 2 ^Exorcism 
becomes unpopular. (5) Complete socialization of 
the universe. The god becomes rational and social. 
But the influence of these forces on ritualism is not 
so direct as the more primitive variations noted 
above. The second type mentioned, the prophetic 
reform, may indeed result in direct change from 
individual influence. But this change is of no 
social consequence unless it is accompanied by a 

1. Henke, op. cit., Chap. VI. 

2. See page 21 note 1. 



The Social Function of Worship 19 

change in social valuations. And so with all the 
other changes. They are the consequence of evo- 
lutions of value. Things once thought worth while 
are no longer striven for. The ceremonials grouped 
around such values therefore cease to keep any 
hold on those for whom these values no longer 
exist. Much of the symbolic ritual of the Catholic 
Church, for example, was dropped by the Protestants 
because of the attacks of the Reformers on the things 
symbolized. 

The forms of religious practice are thus seen to 
be determined as much indirectly by the evolution 
of value, as by the more direct elaborations already 
described. 

Through these changes in ritual the fact of ritual 
itself gradually comes under observation and criti- 
cism. It, too, is rationalized as in some forms of 
Christianity, or in some secret societies. Whereas 
formerly only the leader, if anyone, recognized the 
real nature of ritualistic observance as affecting 
not the gods but men, so now the whole group 
comes to regard the rites as a means of changing 
men, that is, of social control. Such is the use of 
ritual in the Greek letter fraternities and similar 
societies. The effect of the rites upon the neophyte 
is well recognized by the group. Again, the ritual 
of legal procedure has been carried over from the 
time when religion and law were not separated. It 
no doubt assisted in preserving respect for authority 
and in securing order. Under the influence of 
democracy it is gradually being simplified or elimi- 



20 Worship in the Sunday School 

nated. The flag drill held in our public schools 
is another case in point. It is definitely planned 
so as to develop allegiance to the country. 

It is thus seen that changes in value are a large 
factor in the determination of form. What, then, 
controls the changes in value? On page 18, referring 
to Henke, these changes were ascribed to develop- 
ments of the social consciousness as classified under 
five heads. To go still further back and attempt to 
discover the sources of this movement in the social 
consciousness would more properly be a study in 
sociology. But perhaps we can go far enough to 
see that here again the individual is a moving factor. 
This was noted by Henke specifically in the case of 
the religious genius, who directly reforms the inter- 
ests and ideas of the group. The difference, how- 
ever, is one of the field of operation. The scientific 
genius, the mechanical inventor, the great warrior, 
are also creators and destroyers of custom. And 
in a lesser degree, so are all original minds. This 
is true especially where the typical social reaction 
is that of the crowd. Here the most suggestible 
leads, and so far as the crowd possesses a variety of 
possible reactions, what they do is determined by 
the kind of value in which the most suggestible 
member of the group is interested. He sets the 
pace, not only for acts but for the objects of activity, 
so far as choice is possible. This is most clearly 
seen in the fashions of the day. Every fashion is 
started by someone, and its spread is due to the 
fact that a value is now attached to something 



The Social Function of Worship 21 

previously regarded as valueless, or not even thought 
about at all. 1 

But through the increase in the number of well- 
developed individuals, the crowd reaction becomes 
gradually transformed into or supplemented by 
ethical group reaction. Values then become less 
and less matters of suggestion, and are more and 
more dependent upon reflective thinking on the 
part of all the group. 2 

The presence of reflective thinking leads to the 
inclusion of the values themselves as an object of 
criticism. The contrast between the self and the 
future satisfaction sharpens the sense of self. It 
is found that some things satisfy and some do not. 
So far as reflective thinking is present, a choice must 
be made between such things as give more or less 
satisfaction. And the basis of choice is always the 
Self. Only those values therefore can be ultimately 
sought which, to use Professor Coe's terminology, 
are adequate, permanent, and unified, which min- 
ister to a complete, unified, and permanent self. 3 
To such a state of mind as is in the act of seeking 
these values, Coe has applied the term "religious." 
And the mental process plus the accompanying 
expressions, practices and symbolism would be 
called Religion. 

1. It would be interesting at this point to consider the extent to which 
social valuations follow the progress of ideas, especially those of science. 
This is suggested in Chap. VIII of Henke's book, on the "Survival of 
Ritualism." And it should be noticed that these new ideas are the prod- 
ucts of individual thinking, which suggests a still further possibility for 
the individual control of ritual. 

2. Cf. Le Bon, The Crowd, Book I, Chap. I; Book III, Chap. V. Mac- 
Dougall, Social Psychology, pp. 86, 87, 96 ff. 248 ff., 298 ff., and Chap. 
VII and VIII. Also Davenport, op. cit., Chap. VIII. 

3. Article, "Religious Value," cited above. 



22 Worship in the Sunday School 

In Worship, as an expression of the religious state 
of mind, the highest values are symbolized and 
sought. They are here brought clearly to conscious- 
ness and renewed in vitality. Worship thus becomes 
a means of social control, for it serves to cultivate 
and revitalize in the individual the appreciation of 
objects which in its best moments society has come 
to regard as of the highest value. 

But worship may be a factor in social progress 
as well as social control. A natural consequence of 
the nature of the religious consciousness and its 
means of renewal is that it becomes or may become 
through its forms of expression, a means of inspira- 
tion for practical effort. And this in two ways. 
In the first place, as new items of experience are 
lifted into consciousness out of the milieu of custom; 
as new habits of life develop; as new attitudes to 
life and new ideas emerge; these come to be con- 
sidered from the point of view of the supreme value, 
personality. If thought worth while, they are 
taken over into the religious consciousness. A 
generation ago the preacher with the "social mes- 
sage" was frowned upon by the respectable church- 
goers. To-day the churches are coming to stand 
squarely by a social gospel. The new thinking on 
social subjects has found its way into hymns and 
creeds. The social message has gradually been 
linking itself up with all the other themes of religion, 
and has been gathering to itself all the moral sup- 
port that is gained for any cause to which public 



The Social Function of Worship 23 

allegiance is pledged in the serious moments of 
worship. 

Thus a tremendous impetus may be given to a 
movement of thought. It becomes linked up with 
other worthy ends of life. Its fortune is cast among 
the more sacred and precious desires which have 
already been symbolized in the ritual. All the 
most powerful motives of human nature may thus 
be enlisted to reinforce it. 

In the second place, the experience of worship 
itself, with its elevation of idea and feeling, its 
contemplation of the best in life, is a state of mind 
which is pregnant with fresh effort in new directions. 
New levels of moral control are attained. New 
ideas are grasped and new causes espoused. The 
will of the individual, perhaps weak and ineffective 
by itself, is reinforced by the purposes of others. 
The broken resolve is once more taken up into its 
place in an organized life-purpose, which worship 
recreates. 

The great objects of life demand, further, contin- 
ually new means for their accomplishment. And 
so far as existing forms of experience, whether in 
science or politics, or anything else, furnish possi- 
ble means for forwarding the larger interests of life, 
these forms are given new impetus for development 
and application. A pleasing illustration of this is 
seen in music, which has reached its noblest achieve- 
ments in its endeavor to minister to religious needs. 
Indeed, at its earliest stage, music was inseparable 
from the cultus. It either grew out of other forms 



24 Worship in the Sunday School 

of ritual or was soon adopted by the devotee and 
used to advance the ends of religion. Or compare 
with this the interest in therapeutics. The Shaman 
was at first both physician and religious leader. 
The shrine of Aesculapius was a hospital. The 
attraction of Lourdes was and still is its claim to 
cure disease. "Physician of the soul" and like 
phrases, Christian Science and other forms of mental 
healing, all bear witness to the intimate association 
between religion and medicine. And most inter- 
esting of all is the modern campaign for health, 
especially in relation to the eradication of tuber- 
culosis, which is being undertaken largely at the 
instigation of the churches. 1 

In suggesting some of the ways in which changes 
have been brought about in the forms of worship 
and in the values sought we have so far treated 
worship as a means. There is one other aspect, 
however, which must not be overlooked. It will 
be remembered that on page 11 it was noted that 
ritualism is social in a double sense. Not only are 
rites socially prescribed, but they are directed or 
addressed toward other minds, that is, to social 
beings like ourselves. In some cases at least, as 
perhaps in the early Semitic religious feasts, the 
occasion of thus conferring with the social object of 
the rites may have been simply that of fellowship. 2 

1. Graham Taylor, in an article in The Survey for Nov. 23, 1912, says 
that among " 1012 social workers recently tabulated, 92% of those connected 
with associated charities, 88% of those connected with social settlements 
and 71% of all others are church members." 

2. Smith, W. R., Religion of the Semites, and comments of Ames, op. cit., 
pp. 122 and 131. 



The Social Function of Worship 25 

But with changes in economic conditions such as 
might have been brought about by scarcity of food 
or of rain or by pestilence, this simple fellowship 
became transformed into an attempt to conciliate or 
influence the gods in order to restore prosperity. 
It is only as the gods have gradually become social- 
ized that this value of ritualism as a communion 
with spiritual beings is realized in full. Here wor- 
ship is sought not for practical control over the 
necessities of life, but for its own sake as a value 
complete in itself, as an end and not a means. 

From valuing things — food, successful competition, 
sex relations, and so on — men progress to the point 
where these ends of life become only means to more 
sublimated forms of satisfaction. Human fellow- 
ship, at first perhaps a means of defense or of gaining 
a food supply, is found to be enjoyable in itself. 
Thus ends and means change places. So also com- 
munion with gods, once carried on as a means to 
mundane control, becomes an end in itself, a thing 
altogether desirable for its own sake. This trans- 
mutation of value would occur even on Leuba's 
assumption that the gods are only conceptual enti- 
ties. The consequences of such a conception of the 
function of worship seem to move in two directions, 
according to the character of the god-idea. On the 
one hand, where the conception of deity continues 
monarchical, the ritual tends to refinement and 
complexity and high symbolism, as illustrated in 
the three branches of the Catholic Church. The 
forms become a matter of pride and are preserved 



26 Worship in the Sunday School 

intact for their esthetic value. Here the original 
value tends to be merged in the form and to disap- 
pear. On the other hand, where the vital element 
in the thought of God is the idea of companionship, 
ritual becomes simplified, tending toward the expe- 
rience of worship as it is found among the Quakers. 1 
Here the original form tends to be merged in the 
value and to disappear, leaving nothing but the 
experience of fellowship with God. 

Religion is not concerned with this or that or any 
nameable value, but with all values; for religion is a 
movement of the mind within the whole field of val- 
ues, which, as Coe puts it, revalues and unifies them 
all in the light of a progressing personality. At 
first thought it might be said that this merely makes 
personality the value which religion specifically 
seeks. But it is perhaps fair to say that personality 
is not simply a value, but is that in which all values 
subsist. It is not an end but a process, which is 
inclusive of all values; and religion is that aspect of 
the onward movement of personality which is seek- 
ing the highest "permanent, adequate and unified" 
values. It is no great step in the logic of the heart 
to say that personality, being itself social, seeks as 

1. Cf. the article "Friends" by Isaac Sharpless in the New Schaff- 
Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge. Speaking of the worship 
of the Quakers, he says, "... Highest of these (religious acts) is 
the direct communion of the soul with its Maker and its Lord, in rapt de- 
votion, in thanksgiving and prayer. But there are services, in these hours 
of silence, adapted to every degree of religious experience and every serious 
mood of mind. . . 'Sometimes a light surprises' the humble worshiper; 
his thoughts are led on and upward by a higher Power; new meanings of 
texts flash upon his mind, a new illumination is given to the path of duty, 
and in answer to the prayer breathed forth by his inmost soul he feels 
conscious of a closer union with God, and strengthened for his future war- 
fare with the world, the flesh and the devil." 



The Social Function of Worship 27 

its highest end the fellowship of other personalities. 
And worship is one way of finding this fellowship 
in its most satisfactory form; for it includes the 
fellowship of both God and men. 

We are thus led to the conclusion that worship as 
a phase of religious experience has served a manifold 
function. As is clearly brought out by Coe, King, 
Henke, Ames, and others, it originates and develops 
as a means of ritualistic control over the necessities 
of life, a means of attaining what are conceived to 
be the highest values. As the sense of self expands 
and deepens, these values are thought of in terms of 
personality and are consciously sought through the 
mediation of religious ceremony. Here ritual be- 
comes a means of social control, as exampled in the 
savage and civilized (?) rites of initiation. Further, 
religion, as it finds expression in worship, contributes 
a moral and intellectual and esthetic stimulus and 
becomes thereby a means of social progress. Finally, 
by bringing together minds of like ideals and com- 
mon interests, in the presence of a socialized God, 
worship provides a larger social fellowship, including 
fellowship with the Divine Being. Worship is thus 
not only a means but an end in itself — a means by 
which all values are harmonized and conserved and 
illuminated, and an experience within which the 
human soul may find its deepest satisfaction. 1 

1. A good illustration of the tendency for appreciated values to be 
embodied in ritual is seen in the adoption of a service of worship in the Sun- 
day meetings of the Ethical Culture Society. Their moral interests have 
gradually become transformed into religious interests, and the forms of 
religion have been employed to give expression to ethical aspiration. 



CHAPTER III 

THE NEGLECT OF WORSHIP IN THE 
SUNDAY SCHOOL 

Worship, then, is a means by which a leader may 
control the social experience of a group so as to 
conserve and develop social values. One would 
naturally expect, therefore, that worship would be 
intimately associated with other forms of social 
control such as education. It will be remembered 
at once that the earliest forms of formal education 
were not distinguished from instruction in ritual. 
Ritual was the only means of practical control. 
It had consequently to be taught, and the teaching 
was sometimes concentrated into a few days or weeks 
of Initiation Rites at the period of adolescence. 1 
But as other methods of dealing with nature grew 
up, education drew away from its religious limita- 
tions. Yet so far as it was intellectual in character, 
it was still dominated by religious interests. It is 
only in recent years that the two forms of social 
activity, religion and education, have become, any- 
where, almost wholly separated; and this separation 
has perhaps been to the detriment of both church 
and school. Our present effort to bridge this gulf 
is called Religious Education. In the splendid 
endeavor of the present age to provide each younger 

1. Cf. Webster, Primitive Secret Societies, Chaps. Ill and IV. 
28 



The Neglect of Worship 29 

generation with the ideals of life and the means of 
realizing them, worship, as a means of growth in 
the appreciation and control of the highest values, 
has been neglected. And religious education, in its 
attempt to restore the religious attitudes to their 
proper place in the development of the child, has 
been almost as remiss in the use of, or abuse of, the 
experience of worship. Surely, as an experience of 
the highest social fellowship, it should take a promi- 
nent place in any large scheme of education, both 
as means and as end. How much more is it an 
essential factor in that branch of educational prac- 
tice which deals especially with a child's spiritual 
relations, with the cultivation of religious attitudes, 
with the achievement of Christian manhood and 
womanhood ! And should not the Sunday school, as 
the primary public agent in the religious aspects of 
education, count it among its most sacred duties to 
train its children in and through the experience of 
worship? 

That the service of worship in the Sunday school 
has not been given any significant place in religious 
education, is clearly seen by an examination of the 
discussions of the subject as they appear in recent 
books on Sunday-school organization and manage- 
ment. A brief review of some of the best of these 
discussions is here given in order that we may have 
before us the present state of theory with regard to 
Sunday-school worship. 

One of the first among the more recent books on the Sunday 
school is that by Amos R. Wells, "Sunday School Success," 



30 Worship in the Sunday School 

which came out in 1897. Typical of the attitude of all too many 
Sunday schools toward the service is the following paragraph, 
which begins the chapter on The Superintendent's Chance. "At 
the opening of the school the superintendent hasn't half a chance; 
at the close he has a large chance — as large, in fact as he is. At 
the opening the superintendent is merely (!) a master of cere- 
monies to usher in the work as buoyantly as possible; at the close 
he is a teacher, the high priest of all the teachers." And so his 
function in the service of worship is nil; for the purpose of the as- 
sembly is to get one last whack at the pupils before they go home ! 
Other chapters include suggestions equally inapplicable to the 
spirit of worship, though recognizing certain instructional ends. 
For example, the prayer at the close of the session "rivets the 
lesson on the week to come." 

A very suggestive chapter on The Function of a Sunday School 
Ritual appears in Burton and Mathew's "Principles and Ideals 
for the Sunday School," published in 1903. There the use of 
worship as a means to a definite end is clearly brought out, as 
these sentences will show: "The religious feelings need cultivation 
and education as truly as the mind requires religious instruction." 
"While the teaching hour makes its chief appeal to the mind, the 
ritual service has relation chiefly to the cultivation of the emo- 
tions." "What, then, are the feelings which the Sunday school 
ritual should seek to cultivate? We answer: reverence, adoration, 
love, penitence, aspiration, hope. Central in the whole service 
must be the aim to bring before the mind the thought — a true 
thought — of God in the perfection of his holiness, in the infinitude 
of his love and mercy." And then follows an outline of the means 
to this end, chief among which is placed reading from scripture; 
with help from hymns and prayers. The service should be dig- 
nified, cheerful, sincere and flexible, adapted to the various needs 
of different ages and social situations, and so organized that all 
may share in it. While this treatment is hardly adequate, con- 
sidering the importance ascribed to the service in the beginning 
of the chapter, (only eight and a half pages out of a book of 207 
pages) still, some of the fundamental principles are at least 
touched upon. 



The Neglect of Worship 31 

In 1905 Marion Lawrance published a book, "How to Conduct 
a Sunday School," the product of many years of experience with 
all the problems arising in the administration of a large school 
in Toledo, Ohio. In Chapter Four, The Sunday School in Ses- 
sion, he takes up the subject of the service of worship. The chap- 
ter is full of practical suggestions as to how to run off a service 
without delay or friction. All the machinery is accurately de- 
scribed, and a sample program is given. But there is no hint as to 
what this complicated procedure is all about or what it is intended 
to accomplish. That his method will arouse school-spirit is not 
to be denied, but a service of worship, to be truly successful, must 
do more than that. 

Henry F. Cope, General Secretary of the Religious Education 
Association, published in 1907 "The Modern Sunday School in 
Principle and Practice." In the chapter on Program the question 
of the service is discussed. It is most interesting to note that in 
his school there is to be no real individual leadership of worship, as 
the following paragraph shows : " The general form will be adopted 
by the officers of the school; the items for each session will be 
selected by the officers who will have charge of the school or a 
division of the school. The superintendent, therefore, will have 
his hymns, references and all other details chosen and set down 
before he comes into the school room." Thus is responsibility 
for the service divided up among a number of persons. But the 
necessity of cultivating feelings of worship and aspiration is recog- 
nized in the caution to make the service reverent. Other character- 
istics are: varied, unitary, bright, suited to each special division, 
and so on. Emphasis is placed on the need of naturalness, 
idealization and full expression. The advisability of having the 
elementary and secondary grades meet in the church for worship 
is suggested, but the possibilities of this plan in the way of pro- 
moting the spirit of worship are not made as much of as they 
should be. 

In 1912 Cope published another book entitled "Efficiency in 
the Sunday School." In this later book he advances somewhat 
from his earlier position. The value of worship is described as 
enhancing the school-spirit, especially in the singing of the hymns. 



3£ Worship in the Sunday School 

The prevailing type of Sunday-school song is justly censured for 
its lack of both music and thought. The educational possibilities 
of the program are touched on and they are now made to depend 
on the careful planning of the service by the superintendent. 

In 1909 G. W. Mead published his " Modern Methods in Sunday 
School Work." His explicit interest is the revival of the teaching 
function of the church, yet he clearly states the fundamental need 
of religious exercises for the primary and other grades "for the 
cultivation of the spirit of worship and for the inculcation of Bible 
teaching; the one being accomplished through the education of 
the emotions, the latter through the instruction of the mind." 
But beyond stating the general purpose of the service, nothing 
definite is given concerning its specific functions or its instructional 
ends. 

G. A. Coe, in "Education in Religion and Morals," 1909, writes 
as follows : " Finally, as the purpose of the school is that the child 
shall grow in spiritual life, all the technical aspects of teaching 
should be warmed and vitalized by the teacher's own sense of 
God's presence. So also, the act of acquisition on the part of the 
pupil should be associated with worship and with active service 
of one's fellows. Is it not time, for instance, to cease holding 
opening and closing ' exercises' and to substitute therefor opening 
and closing worship in name and in fact?" His further comments 
are devoted to the relation of the children to the church service. 

In the many other books on the Sunday school 
which have appeared the matter is either inten- 
tionally avoided or handled inadequately. 1 

The following brief summaries or quotations of 
magazine articles and committee reports show that 
while now and then some have got hold of a single 

1. Cf. the following: Trumbull, H. C, Yale Lectures on the Sunday 
School, 1888; Vincent, J. H., The Modern Sunday School, 1900 (revised); 
Sheldon, W. L., An Ethical Sunday School, 1900; Haslett, S. B. The Peda- 
gogical Bible School, 1903; Smith, W. W., Religious Education, 1909; 
Meyer, H. H., The Graded Sunday School in Principle and Practice, 1910; 
Harker, R. C, The Work of the Sunday School, Frost, J. M., The School of 
the Church and Smith, W. W. ( The Sunday School of Today, of 1911. 



The Neglect of Worship 33 

vital point in the theory of Sunday-school worship, 
no one seems to have grasped the whole significance 
of the exercise. The most distinctive contribution 
of each writer is italicised. 

In Religious Education, Vol. I, p. 169, a symposium of four 
short articles on Giving Educational Value to the Devotional 
Exercises of the Sunday School is printed. 

1. Lester Bradner. The threefold object of the devotional ex- 
ercises is given as "(1) The formal opening of the school. (2) 
An act of worship for the school. (3) An opportunity to give needed 
notices and directions to the school. In certain cases, time 
permitting, a fourth object may be added, that is, to give some 
short instruction." 

2. Lester B. Jones. "The purpose of worship in church or in 
Sunday school, by child or by man, is the establishment of a direct 
personal contact between the individual and his God, and the 
resultant adjustment of the individual's life to God's ideal of that 
life." 

3. Mrs. B. S. Winchester. The purpose of the opening ser- 
vice is the cultivation of the attitude of reverence and worship. 
Suitable themes should be employed to guide the selection of hymns, 
prayers and responses, such for example as The Happy Life, God 
is Love. It should be real worship and the practice of hymns 
should be avoided when possible. "To recapitulate: Helpful 
features in making the opening program of value in the work of 
Religious Education are these: Continuity in time, coherence in 
thought, use of Biblical passages and hymns which are within 
the range of experience, repetition to the point of familiarity, but 
variety in theme and treatment, and best of all the co-operation 
of all, officers, teachers, pupils, in the act and attitude of worship." 

4. Tyler E. Gale. The service is for education in both the forms 
and spirit of worship, yet must the service be the true expression of 
the child's worship. 

In the Proceedings of the Third Convention of the Religious 
Education Association the Report of the Committee on Worship 



34 Worship in the Sunday School 

in the Sunday School suggests many practical points on method. 
Nothing definite is said concerning the purpose of worship in the 
Sunday school. The "ideal" order seems to be the following: 
Opening sentences, Hymn, Bible Reading, Prayer, Hymn. It is 
thought that the service should be the closing and culminating 
feature of the school session rather than a means of introducing 
the lesson hour. 

Of considerable significance is the address of E. I. Rexford 
delivered at the Seventy-Fourth Convention of the International 
Sunday School Association, Toronto, 1905. 

Respect or reverence, as the feeling which accompanies the 
recognition of superiority or worth in others, is to be developed 
gradually through the imitation of others who are sincerely ob- 
servant of the forms of worship, and by a hearty personal parti- 
cipation in these forms and modes of expression. The child learns 
to worship by worshipping. And, further, which is also important, 
"actual participation in the devotional exercises of the school tends 
to develop an attitude of mind and heart favorable to religious im- 
pressions." "The feeling of gratitude to God will be developed 
and strengthened bj expressing that feeling in prayer and praise." 
Thus Rexford carries the subject further than anyone so far 
quoted. 

The most significant account of Sunday-school worship is that 
of R. M. Hodge, in The Biblical World, Jan. 1906, p. 42. He 
discusses the Organization of Worship, the ideas to be expressed 
and the material to be employed. The need of actually worship- 
ping in order to learn to worship is put very strongly as well as 
the need of explaining the forms used. But he insists that the 
preparation for worship shall be undertaken separately from the 
worship itself. "Drilling in music or explaining subject matter 
distracts attention from adoration to the mere mechanics of 
worship." Warning is given against the danger of paganizing 
worship by making it the awesome adoration of a potentate. 
The need of expert musical leadership is emphasized. The ideas 
used in the worship should always be true for the children and 
involve no mental reservations. Further, the ideas should be 
important. The worship should be addressed to God, but it 



The Neglect of Worship 35 

should bring out both the individual and the social aspects of 
Christianity. The ideas should be adapted to the various ages 
represented. The Primary, Junior and Senior departments might 
well meet separately for this purpose. Finally, "every literary 
and musical composition employed in Sunday-school worship 
should be a masterpiece." 

The lack of material on our subject is surprising, 
especially where one would most expect to find an 
abundance, namely in the literature of religious 
education. Outside of articles on music in the 
Sunday school, only one article is given over wholly 
to the subject in the magazine of the Religious 
Education Association. Only one paper appears 
in the reports of its conventions; no book is an- 
nounced by it as dealing exclusively with the subject; 
and only three or four books seem to regard it as of 
sufficient importance to mention at all. 

Before attempting to make our own reconstruc- 
tion of the purposes and forms of worship, it is 
perhaps advisable to present a few illustrations of 
how the lack of an adequate theory of worship has 
affected current forms of services for the Sunday 
school. The following are chosen at random from 
Sunday-school texts which have had recent cur- 
rency. An examination of these will show how for 
the most part neither the subject matter nor the 
form is suited to the cultivation of a spirit of worship, 
nor adapted to the intelligence and interests of the 
children. 



36 Worship in the Sunday School 

THE ILLUSTRATED BEREAN LESSON QUARTERLY 

Vol. XIII, No. 2 

1. Silence 

2. Responsive sentences: 

Superintendent. Blessed are the undefiled in the way, 
who walk in the law of the Lord 

School. Blessed are they that keep his testimonies, and 
that seek him with the whole heart 

Supt. They also do no iniquity, they walk in his ways 

Schl. Thou shalt command us to keep thy precepts dili- 
gently 

Supt. O that my ways were directed to keep thy statutes! 

Schl. Then shall I not be ashamed, when I have respect 
unto all thy commandments 

All. I will keep thy statutes 

3. Singing 

4. The Ten Commandments or the Apostles' Creed 

5. Prayer, followed by the Lord's Prayer in concert 

6. Singing 

JUNIOR DEPARTMENT PROGRAM 

Order of Service Number Twelve 

To go with the Junior Text-Book of the International (Graded) 

Series 

1. Chord on piano to signalize the beginning of the session 

Class study of fifteen minutes on the Correlated Lesson 

2. Song of worship without words 

3. Worship 

1) Recitation in concert of the Junior motto : 

Be ye doers of the word and not hearers only 

2) Invocation 

Jesus, our Lord and Saviour, thy words are full of truth 
and grace, for thou didst speak as never man spake. 
Wilt thou speak to us through thy word today, and 
help us to be doers of that word today and always. 
Amen. 



The Neglect of Worship 37 

3) Responsive Service, The Beatitudes 

4) Hymn, Jesus, Saviour, Pilot Me 

5) Prayer Service 

Subject for silent prayer suggested by superintendent, 
teachers or pupils 
Silent prayer 
Sentence prayer by the superintendent, repeated by 

teachers and pupils 

4. Business. Offering envelopes, attendance cards, etc., pre- 

pared 

5. Fellowship Exercises 

6. Bible Drill, conducted by the superintendent 

7. Offering Service. Text and Prayer 

8. Hymn 

PILGRIM SERIES 

International Uniform Lessons 
Vol. XXVII, No. 3 
Suggested Program 

A. OPENING WORSHIP 

The Days of Toil and Strain 
I. The Call to Worship 
(The instrument will play softly the strains of the first hymn, 
at the sound of which all will be silent) 

Superintendent. The hour cometh and now is when true wor- 
shippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth : for the 
Father seeketh such to worship him. God is a spirit, and they 
that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth 
School. Where two or three are gathered together in my name 
saith the Lord Jesus, there am I in the midst of them 
(At the chord the school will rise and sing) 
"Laudes Domini" (When morning gilds the skies) 

II. Meditation and Prayer 

Superintendent. The Kingdom of God is not eating and drink- 
ing, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit 

School. See that none render evil for evil; but always follow 
after that which is good, one toward another and toward all 



38 Worship in the Sunday School 

Supt. Rejoice always; pray without ceasing; in everything give 

thanks 
Schl. For this is the will of God in Christ Jesus 
Supt. If any of you lacketh wisdom, let him ask of God, who 

giveth to all liberally and upbraideth not; and it shall be given 

him 
Schl. But let him walk in faith, nothing doubting 
Prayer (Closing with the Lord's Prayer in unison) 

III. Adoration 

Superintendent. God, who commanded the light to shine out 
of darkness hath shined in our hearts, 

School. To give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God 
in the face of Jesus Christ 

Supt. But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the 
exceeding greatness of the power may be of God and not of 
ourselves 

Schl. Not looking each of you to his own things, but each of 
you to the things of others 

Supt. Have this mind in you, which was also in Christ Jesus 

Schl. Who, being in the form of God, counted it not a prize to be 
on an equality with God 

Supt. But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him- 
self the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men; 

Schl. And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, 
and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross 

All. Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him 
a name above every name: that at the name of Jesus every 
knee should bow, of things in the Heaven, and things on earth, 
and things under the earth; and that every tongue should con- 
fess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father 
Hymn, "Mary ton" 
(0 Master, let me walk with Thee.) 

B. INSTRUCTION 

1. Review, Catechism, or other concert work — at the option of 

the superintendent. (Not to exceed five minutes) 
%, The Lesson Read. (If desired, responsively or in unison) 



The Neglect of Worship 39 

3. The Lesson Taught 

4. Review of present or previous lesson. (Pastor or Superin- 

tendent) 

C. BUSINESS 

The offering; reports, announcements; distribution of papers, 
etc. 

D. CLOSING WORSHIP 

Hymn, "Benediction" (Saviour, again to thy dear name we raise) 
Supt. and Schl. in unison, "The Lord bless us and keep us, etc." 

Certainly in such mosaics of scriptural echoes 
any plan or purpose of instruction in or through 
worship does not stand out conspicuously, although 
the headings, Call to Worship, Meditation and 
Prayer, Adoration, Instruction, might lead one to 
expect something of the sort. It is hard to see how 
a program like this or like the one on page 36 is to 
inspire a ten-year-old with a spirit of reverence, or 
guide him in the development of religious feeling. 

Not very different in character is the following 
program from the Bible Study Union Lessons: 

BIBLE STUDY UNION LESSONS 

Progressive Quarterly 
Vol. XVIII, No. 1. 
Opening Service— First Quarter 
The opening service is made brief in order to give as much time 
as possible to the study of the lesson, which is the principal work 
of the Sunday school 

1. Service of Song 

2. Responsive Reading and Hymn (School Standing) 
Superintendent. How beautiful upon the mountains are the 

feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace 
School. That bringeth good tidings of good, that publisheth 
salvation, that saith unto Zion, Thy God reigneth! 



40 Worship in the Sunday School 

Supt. Break forth into joy, sing together, ye waste places of 

Jerusalem; for the Lord hath comforted his people, he hath 

redeemed Jerusalem 
Schl. The Lord hath made bare his holy arm in the eyes of all 

the nations; and all the ends of the earth have seen the 

salvation of our God 
Supt. And there were shepherds in the same country, abiding 

in the fields, and keeping watch by night over their flocks 
Schl. And an angel of the Lord stood by them, and the glory 

of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore 

afraid 
Supt. And the angel said unto them, Be not afraid; for behold, 

I bring you good tidings of great joy which shall be to all 

people 
Schl. For there is born to you this day in the city of David, 

a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord 
Supt. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of 

the Heavenly host praising God and saying, 
All. Glory to God in the Highest, and on earth peace among 

men 

Hymn — Love Divine, all Love excelling 

3. Prayer, closing with the Lord's Prayer in unison 

4. The Scripture reading for the day. (See Lesson) 

5. Announcements 

6. The Lesson 

But it is more hopeful to see the improvements in 
the service offered with the more recent Completely 
Graded Series: 

bible study union lessons 

Completely Graded Series 

Vol. XXI, No. 3. 

Order of Service 

1. Silence 

2. Opening Hymn: "In Heavenly Love Abiding" 

3. Responsive Reading: Psalm 103: 1-5, 13-19 



The Neglect of Worship 41 

4. Prayer, by the Superintendent 

5. Announcements 

6. Lesson Study 

7. Closing Hymn: "Work, for the Night is Coming" 

Yet even this service is manifestly barren of vital 
purpose other than to start things going in the 
customary fashion. 1 

1. Of considerably higher order are such services as appear in Hymns of 
Worship and of Service for the Sunday School, the latest Methodist Sunday- 
School Hymnal, the Universalist Sunday-School Hymnal and in Scripture 
and Song in Worship by Shepardson and Jones. But in none of these is 
the function of the service of worship explained, nor are the orders as well 
adapted as might be, either in form or content, to the spirit of worship. 

The orders of service here given are typical of or better than those used 
in the great mass of schools over the country. In contrast with these the 
reader will of course call to mind exceptional programs of power and dis- 
tinction which he has found in use somewhere. Compare, for example, 
the following satisfactory order of the Center Church School, New Haven: 
Prelude bt Orchestra 

Opening Sentences, by the Leader, closing with 
Leader: O Lord, open Thou our lips 
School: And our mouth shall show forth Thy praise 
Hymn op Praise (Stand) 
The Invocation (Stand) School repeats in unison a common prayer, (From 

Hymns of Worship and of Service) 
The Lord's Prayer 
Hymn (Stand) 

Responsive Reading op Scripture 
The Ascription of Praise — The "Gloria" (Stand) 
Prayer followed by 

The Response, by the School, from the same book. (No. 2, p. 10) 
Intermission for the preparation of attendance and offering envelopes 
The Reception of the Offering 

Leader: Take ye up from among you an offering unto the Lord. 
Whosoever is of a willing heart, let him bring it. 

Leader: For Jesus said 

School: It is more blessed to give than to receive. 
Freely ye have received, freely give. 
Offertory Chant (Evening Hymn) 

Bless Thou the gifts our hands have brought, 

Bless Thou the work our hearts have planned. 
Ours is the faith, the will, the thought, 

The rest, O God, is in Thy hand. Amen. 
Hymn (Stand) 
The Teaching of the Lesson 



Orchestra 

Hymn (Stand) 

The Words of Aspiration, in unison, Psalm 121 

Closing Prayer 

Silent Prayer 

The Benediction, in unison 

The Lord bless us and keep us, etc. 



42 Worship in the Sunday School 

But it may be objected that a bare outline of the 
service is not sufficient evidence against its value. 
A few observations of the exercises as they are actu- 
ally carried on in modern schools have therefore been 
collected. The following questions concerning the 
services were put to students in Union Theological 
Seminary who are now in Professor Coe's course 
on the Sunday school, and who have been making 
careful investigations of the methods of different 
schools, in connection with this course. 

School of what Church? 

Denomination? 

Place? 

1. Is there a spirit of worship? 

2. Is instruction or training in worship aimed at? 

3. If not, is there any definite purpose? 

Forty-one students reported on fifty-one schools, 
no two observing the same school. These schools 
were distributed among eleven denominations, in 
thirty-one places, in nine states. Nineteen schools 
were in Greater New York. The character of the 
schools ranged from some of the larger ones in New 
York to the "way back" country schools, which 
latter were by no means the only offenders in matters 
of worship. 

To question one, Is there a spirit of worship? 19 answered a 
certain "No"; 15 reported it as not clear; 4 considered it present 
but limited; 13 were sure of its presence. That is, in only 13 
out of the 51 schools visited did the opening service seem to stir 
or exhibit a spirit of worship. 

With regard to question two, Is instruction or training in wor- 



The Neglect of Worship 43 

ship aimed at? 17 answered negatively; 11 found it not evident 
or definite; 4 thought it was partially sought; 17 answered "Yes." 
That is, in only 17 out of the 51 schools was training in worship 
apparently attempted. 

In the case of some other purpose than that of worship or train- 
ing in worship, 15 found none present and 22 detected some kind 
of purpose. Of the latter, 8 stipulated purposes, as, for example, 
to preserve custom, to gain order, to make announcements, to 
get started, to learn the books of the Bible, or the words of hymns 
and psalms, or to learn Bible stories. 

These results are thoroughly borne out by the 
personal observations of the author in this city and 
elsewhere, and by those of Professor Coe and of Miss 
Margaret Slattery, who confirm the opinion that 
most of our school services, whether conducted 
according to the prescribed orders or not, are with- 
out vital purpose, and without a spirit of worship. 
For the most part they are not orderly. The hymns 
are often undignified, the prayers wandering, the 
general tone one of indifference, relieved occasion- 
ally, because of the personality of the leader, by an 
accidental success. 

This brief review of the literature about worship 
in the Sunday school, the examples given of pro- 
grams now in use, and the results of the observa- 
tions of the actual conduct of services, have perhaps 
made clear the need for further thought and experi- 
mentation in this field. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE PURPOSE OF WORSHIP IN THE 
SUNDAY SCHOOL 

Within the experience of worship, as in the ordi- 
nary experience of fellowship with friends, the indi- 
vidual is often in a mood which makes it easy for 
certain mental changes to occur. Certain ends 
may be sought through worship which depend for 
their attainment upon the state of mind natural 
to this experience. These ends are subjective 
rather than objective. They concern the control 
of the environment only indirectly, through the 
control of the self. They include the illumination 
of all the values that are socially sought, whether 
esthetic, intellectual or moral. Ideas and ideals 
are mediated in worship. 1 Worship must serve for 
instruction as well as training in order to be effective. 
Our ideas of God, of destiny, of human relations, 
are clarified and elevated. They are here given a 
concreteness and vivid reference to reality without 
which it is not possible to associate them with emo- 
tional dynamic. However independent of religion 
art may become, yet in some kind of an experience 
of free contemplation art may find its highest inspi- 
ration; and it will use its own products to assist in 
winning the attitude of mind in which artistic crea- 

1. See Chap. II and VI. Cf. Hocking, Meaning of God in Human Ex- 
perience, Chap. XXIV, "Thought and Worship," esp. pp. 350 ff. 

44 



The Purpose of Worship 45 

tivity is inspired. 1 And art, too, by lending har- 
mony and beauty to a service of worship, will minis- 
ter to the mood of reverence within which moral 
attitudes are reinforced. 

From our previous discussion it appears thus that 
every service in the Sunday school has or should have 
two purposes running through it: First, it should 
afford training in worship — in what has been called 
the larger social fellowship, including God and the 
rest of the group — by an actual participation in 
worship. Second, it should have as its objective 
the presentation and illumination of some specific 
social value, whether moral, intellectual or esthetic, 
which shall, through its emotional setting in the 
service, be incorporated into the life of the child as 
it can be in no other way. 

Before proceeding further with the analysis of the 
social values to be realized through worship, it may 
be well at this point to suggest the place of leader- 
ship in the worship of the Sunday school. We found 
in Chapter II that religious ceremonies, in their 
various functions, had been led and developed by 
individuals and that they would always require some 
kind of leadership. Henry Suzzallo, in his editorial 
introduction to "Moral Principles in Education" 
by John Dewey, speaking of the relations of expert 
opinion and public opinion, says: 

"In the conduct of the schools, it is well for the citizen to 
determine the ends proper to them, and it is their privilege to 

1. Cf. Hocking, op. cit., pp. 407, 408, 416-420. Also, Browning, Andrea 
del Sarto, Apt Vogler. 



46 Worship in the Sunday School 

judge of the efficacy of the results. Upon questions that concern 
all the manifold details by which children are to be converted 
into desirable types of men and women, the expert school-master 
should be authoritative, at least to a degree commensurate with 
his superior knowledge of this very complex problem. The ad- 
ministration of the schools, the making of the course of study, the 
selection of texts, the prescription of methods of teaching, these 
are matters with which the people, or their representatives upon 
boards of education, cannot deal save with the danger of becom- 
ing mere meddlers." 

And in Chapter II, Dewey himself says, "The 
moral responsibility of the school, and of those who 
conduct it, is to society." 

These statements are equally true of the religious 
educator, even in that portion of his regime within 
which falls the service of worship. Is not the leader 
of worship in the Sunday school morally responsible 
to the community for the sort of experience the 
children are there receiving, and for the kind of 
values they are there being trained to understand and 
seek? Where the community is unable to judge of 
such values, the leader must take the initiative in 
guiding the course of the child's experience in the 
direction of what he conceives to be the highest 
social values. And even where the community is 
capable of passing judgment on the great ends of 
religious education, then he should be free to control 
the process by which these ends are gained, whether 
it be in class work or in worship. 

But this freedom of control involves a correspond- 
ing responsibility which, indeed, few outside of the 
clergy have been specially trained to meet. See 



The Purpose of Worship 47 

what this ideal director of religious education should 
be in his capacity as leader of worship! He should 
in the first place be himself a worshiper, capable of 
entering fully into that larger fellowship to which 
he is to introduce his congregation of children. He 
should, second, be himself a seeker of the highest 
values which society, in its best moments, has sought. 
Third, he should be sensitive to the progress of his 
own community toward an appreciation of such 
values. Fourth, he should be familiar with the 
mind of the child and its growing purposes. Fifth, 
he should be master of the methods by which in 
worship the child mind can be brought into vital 
connection with social ideals, so that it shall come 
to adopt them as its own. A large requirement, no 
doubt, and one not soon to be realized; but surely 
one toward which we must look with confidence if 
we are to expect the usefulness and vitality of the 
service of worship to continue, either in church or 
Sunday school. 

We come now to discuss more specifically what 
social values are to be sought through worship. As 
was suggested in Chapter I, education is concerned 
largely with the cultivation of social attitudes as 
one of the most valuable assets in human relations, 
and that Christian education is concerned with the 
development of attitudes in which the Christian 
purpose finds expression. For our present needs, 
we may define the Christian purpose as the intention 
to live and to help others to live as children of God 
the Father. The attitudes characteristic of this 



48 Worship in the Sunday School 

family relationship are, therefore, the social values 
to be sought through worship. 

In the class room, the interest is necessarily intel- 
lectual. To be sure, we wish the ideas, as Dewey 
puts it, to be "acquired in such a vital way that 
they become moving ideas, motive forces in the guid- 
ance of conduct." That is, our interest, whether 
in class or assembly, is to make active Christians, 
and not simply to give information. Yet in the 
class, it is primarily through the acquisition of new 
knowledge that we hope to attain this end; while 
in the service it is not so much new knowledge as new 
attitudes that we hope to win. How central in the 
educational scheme the service then becomes! As 
was just now suggested, we can state our educational 
end in terms of attitudes. If we could follow our 
pupils day by day through the week we would state 
our immediate as well as our final purpose partly in 
terms of conduct. But since we cannot keep con- 
duct in continuous control under our present system, 
we must trust that if the right attitudes are won in 
the right way, they will work themselves out to some 
extent in the refinement of conduct and character. 

Now while it is the ethical side that is directly 
of most import, while it is the actual external be- 
havior that seems of most social significance, yet 
the emotional reactions are vital, further, because of 
their organic relation to general efficiency and 
because of the richness and satisfaction of mental 
life which they involve. We want more than mere 
machines of etiquette performing approximately the 



The Purpose of Worship 49 

right act at the right time. We need all the abun- 
dance of a varied emotional and appreciative experi- 
ence to lend worthwhileness to life and to make 
possible all the finer discriminations and adjust- 
ments in infinitely changing situations, which no 
mere machine can accomplish. 

It was suggested in Chapter I that efficiency in 
conduct is one method of gaining and one means 
of judging character. Another method is found not 
in conduct but in reflection — in the reorganization 
of experience and in appreciation as a self-consistent 
value. Its justification is in itself. It is a region 
of empirical experience just as much as is science. 
Whether or not it may claim knowledge of a reality 
known through this experience, just as science claims 
the reality of something beyond the self, as the 
source of sensations, need not be discussed here. 
Whether the experience is called Mysticism or not, 
it presents a claim upon the attention of the educator 
as the actual attainment of certain values in life. 
Among these values we may count conviction, for 
example, as of vital importance, indeed, not only for 
individual satisfaction, but also for social efficiency. 
Just as we possess as a self -consistent value the sim- 
ple companionship of a friend, just as discussion 
could be regarded by Aristotle as the chief end of 
the State, so communion with God, however named 
or explained, possesses a satisfaction that needs no 
further apologetic than its own existence affords. 

A theory of education can hardly pass over, 
therefore, the possibility of cultivating what may 



50 Worship in the Sunday School 

be called the devotional life, the contemplative 
aspect of experience, which our American rush has 
so crowded out. This is chiefly the function of the 
general assembly of the school. But it may be 
borne in mind that the subject is vitally related 
also to the individual life and practice, and to private 
devotions. 

It is, then, with religious attitudes or feelings, 
regarded both as ends in themselves and as means 
to social efficiency, that the service is chiefly con- 
cerned. 1 

What attitudes or feelings, then, are to be culti- 
vated in worship, which will give concrete content 
to the purpose of training in the spirit of worship? 
For convenience, the Christian attitudes suitable 
to children from the first to the eighth grades (and, 
indeed, when properly defined, for other ages as 
well) might be summed up under the rubrics Grati- 
tude, Goodwill, Reverence, Faith, and Loyalty. 
These are not arbitrarily chosen, but are intended 
to include whatever is essential to the child's reli- 
gious relationships. Other names might be pre- 
ferred, but the same types of experience would have 
to be included under them, and any name would 
have to be carefully defined. These are the feelings 
which appear in the family associations. Others 
also appear, but they are so closely related to these 
as to be included under them — or they are the con- 
sequence of the absence of one of these five! 

1. This follows also from the nature of feeling and emotion and the 
peculiar facility of the service in controlling feeling. This matter is taken 
up more in detail in Chaps. V and VI. 



The Purpose of Worship 51 

These attitudes, moreover, furnish convenient 
themes around which to group a series of services, 
and which are fruitful for the collection and or- 
ganization of the materials of the service — hymns, 
psalms, stories, and so on. If each theme should be 
given approximately six weeks, it will be noted that, 
taken in the order given, they fit in with the seasonal 
observances, Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter. 
For a few weeks each could be made the central 
theme of the whole service, controlling music, re- 
sponses, prayers, and all the rest. Although no 
one of these five themes is exclusive of the others, 
and considerable overlapping is unavoidable, indeed 
desirable, yet each does represent a specific emphasis. 
Each includes both a group of Christian attitudes 
and the ideas which consciously embody or formulate 
these attitudes. 

A brief exposition of the five feelings and their 
inclusive ideas follows: 

Gratitude 

Gratitude is the tender and joyous emotional 
response that usually manifests itself in the impulse 
to repay a kindness. There is the feeling, that is, 
of obligation, the consciousness that the kindness 
has cost some one something, or, at least, as Shand 1 
says, is an indication that the benefactor is willing 
to sacrifice himself for your sake. Schematically 
it could be analyzed as follows: 

1. Cf. Shand, Chap. XVI in Stout's Groundwork of Psychology. See 
also below, p. 98. 



52 



Worship in the Sunday School 



THE THINGS OR SITUATIONS WHICH SHOULD CALL OUT 
THE RESPONSE OF GRATITUDE 



Real situations, 

present and personal : 



Gifts, services, and the 
general present situation 
of home, school, food, etc. 



Ideal situations, 

personal or vicarious, 
imaginary or recalled: 

Description or recall 
of, or reference to gifts, 
services, or the general 
situation of home, school, 
and so on. 

Stories 

Pictures 

Etc. 



THE REACTION OF GRATITUDE 



Direct: 



Indirect: 



The attitude of gratitude, 

inclusive of: 
Joy 

Tenderness 
The impulse to repay 

(Feeling of obligation) 

Expressed by postures, spon- 
taneous acts and excla- 
mations 



The idea of gratitude. 
The attitude formulated 



Expressed by words or 
by deliberate acts 



Goodwill 

Goodwill, or Love, is here regarded as a more 
perfectly social reaction than gratitude. No favors 
or gifts are preliminary to it, but only the fact of 
social relation, calling for a sharing of interest. In 



The Purpose of Worship 53 

its most generalized form, Goodwill might be thought 
of as the 

Universal , / Sympathy and , „ . ,, . \ a . 
„ of < * Ti- to the Situation > Society 

Response { Kindliness J 

Thinking of person No. 2 as the one who has the 
attitude of goodwill, and of No. 1 as the person 
toward whom he feels it, we have the varying con- 
ditions of No. 1 as the "situations" to which No. 2 
makes response. 



CONDITION OF SUBJECTIVE RESPONSE 

PERSON NO. 1 OF PERSON NO. 2 



Feelings of: 
Joy 



Good Fortune 

Happiness, Joy, etc. 

Ill Fortune 
Sorrow 
Bitterness, etc. 

Wrongdoing Sorrow 

Ill-will, etc. Pity 



Pity 
Sorrow 



Forgiveness 



FORMS OF CONTROLLED EXPRESSION 

Cheerful Demeanor 
Kind Acts 
Helpful Acts 
Courtesy, Respect 
Generous Conduct 
Hospitable Behavior 
Forgiving all Offenders 



54 Worship in the Sunday School 

Reverence 1 

As the spirit of worship or reverence is supposed 
to be present in the service anyway, it may be 
asked why it is made the subject of a special period. 
The answer is that it is so central to the religious 
attitude as a whole that it needs a more distinct 
emphasis than can be given it in every service, 
in order that its practice and forms may be brought 
to the level of conscious purpose. The religious 
state of mind may be thought of as having two poles, 
Reverence and Faith. The current of the religious 
life flows steadily from one to the other, passing out 
from the positive pole of faith into the circuit of 
contact with the world, and back again to the 
negative pole of reverence, from which, through the 
solution of the experience of worship, it moves on 
again to faith. That some such rhythm exists is 
a necessary consequence of the consciousness of 
the self that is, as it appears in contrast with the 
self that is to be, or with the ideal self. It is an 
accompaniment of the consciousness of value. The 
value desired is felt in contrast with the value already 
attained, and then the value desired is grasped 
for with a vigorous outreach and expansion of self. 
The first state of mind is that of reverence and the 
second is that of faith. An analysis of reverence 
is attempted on the following page. 

1. See below, Chap. VI, on the religious feeling. 



The Purpose of Worship 



55 



Reverence may be analyzed somewhat in this wise : 



SITUATION 
TO WHICH 
RESPONSE 
IS MADE 



Authority 

Age 

Superiority 

Greatness 

Goodness 

Heroism 

Wisdom 
Law (Social 

Control) 
Mystery 
The idea of the 

presence of God 



SUBJEC- 
TIVE 

RESPONSE. 
FEELINGS 
OF 



Awe 1 
Fear 
Wonder 
Admiration 

Tender Feeling 

Submission 
Respect 
Dependence 
Love 

Penitence, Regret 



OVERT 
RESPONSE 



Acts of Respect 

Obedience 

Worship 

Praise 

Communion 
Repentance, New Resolves 
(Reparation) 



Faith 

The significance of the Faith attitude in religion 
has already been suggested. Beginning sometimes 
with surrender to God and absolute reliance on him, 
faith passes on into the realization of one's own 
possible contribution to the purpose of God. As 
such it is necessarily self-assertive in the highest 
sense. It is the demand for life and opportunity; 

1. See p. 98. 



56 Worship in the Sunday School 

the assertion that the highest values are ultimately- 
necessary to the self, and that what is needed will 
therefore be found or created. It is the spirit of 
confidence and hope which lies back of creative 
effort. It anticipates experience; its reference is 
future. It lives in the future as memory lives in 
the past. Yet it lives also in the present, for its 
genius is to transform possibility — nay even "im- 
possibility" into present and vivid fact. Ulti- 
mately faith refers to persons, though proximately 
it may refer to causes or ideals. It is a conviction 
concerning the goodness or capacity of someone. 
Among the objects of faith are persons actively en- 
gaged in a cause or believed to be capable of growth 
or achievement. Hence there is faith in self, in 
friends, in human nature, in God — all thought of 
as ultimately going to succeed in some undertaking. 

This too is an aspect of the valuation process. 
As religion is the revaluation of all values in terms 
of a completely realized self, so faith is the mood 
or state of mind in which this achievement of new 
values for the self and the conservation of old values 
for the self is won. 

Faith has so many factors that it is difficult to 
classify them or list them, but the following may 
be suggestive: 



The Purpose of Worship 



51 



THE 

OBJECT OR 
SITUATION 
TO WHICH 
RESPONSE 
IS MADE 



God 
Persons 

(Human Nature) 
Self 
Natural Law 

The Order of 
Events 
Ideals 
Principles 
Worthy Causes 



THE 

RESPONSE 
IN FEELING 



THE RESPONSE 
IN ACT 



Self-Control 

Cheerful Endurance 

Confident and 
Joyous Activity 
in the Direction 
of an Ideal 



Hope 
Assurance 
Joy 
< Freedom 
Aspiration 
Confidence 
Trust 



Loyalty 

Loyalty involves an extension of the self-feeling. 
The interest in the self is identified with the interests 
of the person, group, institution or cause toward 
which one is loyal. The sense of ownership, of per- 
sonal possession, is strong. The loyal individual 
feels that the cause is his cause, the team, his team, 
and that all that touches this touches him. Loyalty 
involves also self-surrender. There is a giving up 
of the self to the object of loyalty. The self is 
invested in the cause or institution. The feeling 
of ownership is here also, but now the cause owns 
the man. He has devoted, that is, given himself to it. 

The objects of loyalty in which the religious educa- 
tor is interested are many; for example, the family, 



58 Worship in the Sunday School 

friends, the church, the school, public institutions, 
Christian ideals of character and conduct, and so on. 
But the theme "Loyalty" represents also a review. 
We have to be faithful not only to the demands 
of friendship (including the friendship of God), 
not only to the friendly groups of family, commu- 
nity and country, and that largest group, the 
Kingdom of God; but also to all the principles and 
ideals so far achieved and made conscious: Grati- 
tude, Goodwill, Reverence, and Faith. 

The foregoing scheme is seen to be a large one 
and to embrace more in each division than can be 
adequately treated in six sessions. But a longer 
Period for each will be found monotonous. With 
such purposes for the service in mind, therefore, 
one could break away from this grouping of topics 
and carry the principle of instruction in attitudes 
in a similar way through the year. It might be 
preferable to devote only one Sunday at a time to 
one such topic, and thus carry the development 
forward at a slower, but it may be, a surer pace. 

Before showing how these themes can be incor- 
porated into definite orders of service, it will be 
necessary to consider at some length the nature of 
feeling, and its relation to worship and to the prin- 
ciples and methods of education. This then will 
form the subject matter of the next two chapters. 



CHAPTER V 

THE NATURE OF FEELING AND THE PLACE 
OF FEELING IN EDUCATION 

So far we have come to see that in religious edu- 
cation we are to develop certain feeling attitudes, 
and we have suggested that the service of worship 
is the proper means to use for this purpose. In 
the preceding chapter we attempted what may be 
called a social analysis of the feelings to be culti- 
vated in worship. Now in the construction of 
services one purpose of which is to control and 
develop feeling, it will be helpful to have in mind 
what " Feeling" is, what function it serves in the 
development of the race and of the individual, and 
what relation it bears to the experience of worship 
itself. We have therefore to make a psychological 
analysis of feeling. In the present chapter we shall 
discuss first, the general place of feeling in evolution, 
and second, the functional view of the nature of 
feeling, and the place of feeling in education. But 
first a word as to method in the psychology of 
feeling. 

It would naturally be expected that feeling would 
be differently treated by different types of psycho- 
logical interest. On the one hand there is struc- 
tural psychology. It is concerned with the content 
of consciousness, the elements out of which the 

59 



60 Worship in the Sunday School 

stuff of consciousness is built. Or it may devote it- 
self to locating in the brain the exact areas concerned 
with various aspects of the mind. To arrive at its 
conclusions it may use several methods, but its 
chief tool is introspection. The analyst looks 
into his own mind and describes what he finds 
there. He supplements this descriptive study with 
experiment and inference from the actions of other 
minds. He may even go into the physiology of 
brain action for light on some difficult problems 
of self -analysis. But his interest is to classify and 
tabulate the material of consciousness. 

On the other side, there is functional psychology 
which, while not neglecting the description of the 
contents of consciousness, is more concerned with 
finding out what the mind does than what it is. 
It analyzes the' materials of conscious activity 
to show why the mind behaves in a certain way 
under certain conditions, or how it attains its ends. 
The chief interest is in the activity rather than in 
the state of mind. When coupled with physiological 
psychology it may even at times go so far as to 
ignore the contents of the mind altogether and 
study only the reactions of a body in various situa- 
tions. 

The method of functional psychology is thus 
seen to be primarily the experimental study of 
overt acts. The question "why" is not asked, 
but only the question " what . ' " The assumed answer 
to "why" is: That is the way the creature is made. 
The problem of the relation of consciousness to 



Feeling and Education 61 

action may be assumed to be unanswerable, or it 
may simply be thought of as outside the proper 
field of psychological study, or it may be regarded 
as having some relation to conduct, positive or neg- 
ative, whether that relation can be defined or not. 

What is the place of Feeling, then, in these differ- 
ent types of psychology? How is it regarded by 
them? The structuralists naturally look at it 
either as a faculty or as an element of mind. It 
may be thought of as something coordinate with 
intellect and will, or merely as an irreducible 
element or atom of mind which cannot be further 
differentiated. In the latter case the emphasis is 
placed not on feeling as a faculty, but on the feel- 
ings, as of many kinds and qualities. Great effort 
may be made to distinguish feelings from sensations 
or to identify the two. The feelings are classified 
and catalogued. The emotions may be variously 
analyzed as subsidiary to feeling or as inclusive of 
all feelings. 

The functionalists, on the other hand, try to 
discover what purpose feeling serves; where it 
belongs in the on-going mental process; what may 
be its typical forms of physical expression and 
under what conditions they appear. Some would 
think of it as the spring of all action and others as 
the product of action. Still others make feeling 
the coordinate accompaniment of action. But 
always is it located in the cycle of consciousness 
with reference to activity and function. 

The great difficulty of handling feeling psycho- 



62 Worship in the Sunday School 

logically will perhaps now be seen. As an object 
of direct introspection feeling is illusory. It dis- 
appears when observed, or changes its character. 
As an object of memory it is still more un tractable, 
for no feeling can be contained in words or revived 
at will without reference to the situation which 
originally called it forth. And to make feeling the 
object of experimental study may also be a way 
fraught with peril, for the subject's state of feeling 
can be determined only by inference from what he 
does, or by his own introspection. 1 

The tendency, however, seems to be to depend 
less and less on direct introspection and to use more 
and more of the data which, like those of sensation, 
memory, and so on, can be collected by observing 
subjects under controlled conditions, and by con- 
sidering such external features of activity as the 
changes in the nervous system. The result is that 
feeling comes to be placed on the out-going, react- 
ing side of mental activity, and is regarded there- 
fore as only indirectly and by inference a source of 
knowledge of the outside world. Feeling, that is, is a 
phase of adjustment manifesting itself in conscious- 
ness as an attitude toward an object or situation. 

1. James' data for the theory of feeling, as they appear in his Psychology, 
seem to be chiefly the product of self-analysis and general observation, 
supported by such physiological knowledge as he could use and by such 
experiment as seemed helpful. Dewey classifies the feelings and their nu- 
merous variations in a schematic way in his Psychology. His two articles 
in the Psychological Review, 1894, on the "Theory of Emotion," attempt to 
reconcile Darwin and James by restating the positions of both men on the 
basis of his own introspection and in the light of a more thoroughgoing func- 
tional point of view. Wundt, by actual experiment, works out his theories 
of the relation of pleasure and pain to sensation. Judd makes his studies 
still more objective and experimental, thus building up his theory of atti- 
tudes. Thorndike goes still farther back, finding support for the prevailing 
functional view of feeling in the physiology of brain cells. 



Feeling and Education 63 

Having thus seen the general way in which the 
subject of feeling is approached by psychology, it 
may be valuable for us to refer to the work of some 
who have been interested more specifically in the 
field of religion. Turning first to J. P. Hylan's 
monograph, "Public Worship," we find the ques- 
tionaire method used as one means of discovering 
the mental processes involved in worship. Among 
the elements of worship is emotion. Just what 
emotions are aroused is supposed to be found by 
consulting the answers to certain questions of the 
questionaires. On such evidence he concludes 
that the religious emotion is distinct from other 
emotions and that the "natural expression of relig- 
ious emotion is the moral control of conduct." 
And then he goes on to show that the function of 
worship is to reinforce with religious emotion the 
motives to moral conduct. So far as Hylan has 
made use of his knowledge of the history of religion 
and of general psychology, his method seems to 
be sound enough, but the questionaire aspect of 
the work needs to be taken with caution. The 
questions themselves are often suggestive of the 
answers, or require a finer power of analysis than 
the average person possesses. The proportion of 
answers to questionaires sent out is not stated. 
And finally, conclusions are drawn from small 
percentages of answers and then applied universally. 

Ames' treatment of feeling 1 in its relation to reli- 
gion is not an attempt to get new data, but rather 

1. Ames, E. S., The Psychology of Religious Experience, Chap. XVII. 



64 Worship in the Sunday School 

to state the bearing of current theories of feeling 
upon the psychology of religious experience. He 
recognizes that feeling does not exist for its own sake 
and that it may become a form of dissipation or 
disease when too divorced from practical experience. 
Yet the dynamic relation of feeling to action, which 
he mildly states with reference to experience in 
general, is not given full justice when it is discussed 
in its relation to religious experience. Pratt 1 and 
Starbuck 2 employ the same general method, depend- 
ing for the most part upon a re-analysis of old data 
and upon direct introspection of the same type 
as heretofore described. 

This will serve to indicate the complexity of the 
problem and the inadequacy of the methods so 
far used. Introspection is certainly invaluable, 
but it needs support from experimental study, 
as is plainly indicated by the great variety of 
theories evolved by the different users of this 
method. Yet most of the experimental work that 
has been done seems not to be wholly conclusive, 
and the experimenters fall back on self-analysis 
as the surest road to a knowledge of feeling. That 
introspection must always be used is of course 
recognized, but it is to be hoped that some objective 
methods may be devised by which useful material 
may be gathered for introspection to work upon 
and for reflection to organize into a more consistent 
and satisfactory theory of feeling than is now known. 

1. Pratt, J. B., The Psychology of Religious Belief. 

2. Starbuck, E. D., "Feelings and Their Place in Religion," Am. Journ. 
Rel. Psych, and Educa. Vol. I, p. 168. 



Feeling and Education 65 

Feeling and Evolution 

In trying to grasp the nature and meaning of 
consciousness and its place and function in the 
evolutionary process called life, one's thought soon 
brings him up aghast against the impenetrable 
mystery of things. Physical science has found 
that it cannot account for what seems to go on 
in nature without thinking of matter as a form 
of energy, and searching out as its foundation the 
ultimate unit charge of negative electricity moving 
through space. In a similar way biological science 
cannot explain the behavior of animals, the actions 
of men, alone and in society, without a something 
called consciousness. The Things of Physics were 
once thought of as of one substance, then of a few 
elements, then of atoms in molecules and compounds; 
but finally the atom, too, burst like a rocket into 
a thousand infinitesimal corpuscles, and the dark 
sky of knowledge blazed for a moment with a new 
explanation of things. Mind, in like manner, was 
once taken wholesale, or divided into elements of 
intellect, will, and feeling. Soon came finer divisions 
of faculties and of sensational atoms out of which 
the complex compound of a conscious state was 
supposed to be built. And now a strict psycho- 
physical parallelism finds significance for the mind 
in each of the millions of cells of which the nervous 
system is built. And as an undefined something 
called energy is the unifying principle of matter, 
so an undefined something called consciousness 
is the unifying principle of life. 



66 Worship in the Sunday School 

It is conceivable that with a perfect knowledge 
of a man's experience and a complete location 
and measurement of all the functions of all the 
nerve cells of the brain, one could discover the 
content of consciousness; and some would even 
say that, given all this knowledge, they could also 
state what direction consciousness would then take 
under specified conditions, and so make of con- 
sciousness an epi-phenomenon, a secretion of the 
brain. But even if it were, was there ever a secre- 
tion of no use? The liver secretes the bile, to 
be sure, but the bile has a vital organic function 
without which the liver could not exist. Irrespec- 
tive of all theories of its production, "without 
consciousness, no brain" is as true as "without 
the brain, no consciousness." The interaction of 
structure and function in evolution, the dependence 
of life on matter as its condition and field of opera- 
tion, suggest the possible further identification or 
correlation of energy and consciousness in a com- 
pletely universal principle of unity. 

If our language were built upon an experience 
of a world which was temporal only, and not spatial, 
we might more easily describe the content of con- 
sciousness as a series of events which can never 
be reversed and which can be read only in one 
direction. We cannot turn around and move 
toward the past. Yet consciousness does seem 
to have also a spatial content and a spatial effect. 
But even so, it can hardly be located in space; 
spatial analogies fail to describe it. We try to 



Feeling and Education 67 

locate it geometrically by drawing a line of cross 
section between the me and the not-me. There 
seems to be a fence between me and the so-called 
world. I stand on one side but can not see over, 
while on the other side is a something or somebody 
tossing over blocks of sensation of all shapes and 
sizes for me to catch. These I fit together into a 
structure which represents for me the thing that is 
on the other side of the fence. But there are many 
fences. There is one between my family and 
society, one between my body and its physical 
environment; one between my brain and what my 
body brings to my brain; and finally one between 
that subtle thing called consciousness and my 
brain itself with all that it represents of the non-ego. 
There is the inner court at whose gates the yelling 
mob of sensations is battering for entrance; while 
behind the mystic veil lies the Holy of holies to 
which we find entrance only in those rare moments 
when we feel most keenly the thrill and throb of 
cosmic life, and seem to come into touch with a 
world that is not of sense and sight. 

All our chemical analysis will not initiate us into 
the inner life. There is only one door, and that is 
introspection. But the pioneers seem to agree 
in general on what is inside, which may indicate 
that each consciousness explored is not an altogether 
unique entity, but possesses a common element like 
the water of an estuary or of a swirl or eddy in the 
all-inclusive deep of cosmic consciousness. Or, to 
put it in another way, consciousness is essentially 



68 Worship in the Sunday School 

social. Cross sections of the stream of conscious- 
ness at any point present in a graphic, diagram- 
matic way what is passing. But the sections have 
to be analyzed and blocked off into areas variously 
named sensations, images, feelings, and so on. And 
the result is that our diagram is no more like the 
reality than botany is like a rose. Nevertheless, 
as botany helps us grow roses, so psychology helps 
us grow minds. 

But it will not do so unless we can get at some 
workable theory of the relation between our minds 
and our bodies, even though that theory be simply 
that everything in behavior can be accounted 
for without reference to consciousness at all; that 
is, that conscious states are convenient names 
for physiological processes. We might hold that 
consciousness is not needed to explain changes in 
the individual's habitual reactions in the direction 
of more successful activity, for success is nervous 
equilibrium called satisfaction. What has the con- 
scious hearing of a sound got to do with the start 
or the running away? These are automatic con- 
nections between certain kinds of vibrations of the 
ear drum and certain motor cells. The awareness 
of what goes on does not help any. It need not 
have anything to do even with the variation of the 
reaction. The mere physiological recording of 
responses which on one occasion or another of the 
same sort led to equilibrium would tend to draw 
off the stimulus on a similar occasion in those chan- 
nels rather than in any other. The fact of learning 



Feeling and Education 69 

to do something by selecting from among a variety 
of random acts only those that are successful might 
thus be accounted for without the aid of conscious- 
ness, by the almost inconceivable intricacy of 
countless connections between millions of neurones. 

But would this carry us beyond the point of 
sheer existence? It might almost seem that the 
capacity to react to an external stimulus is enough 
to account for progress. Congenital variations 
present continually new responses and structures 
which are selected for perpetuation through the 
survival of those members of the species which 
possess them. Given time enough and sufficiently 
varied conditions, and it seems as though any 
behavior or structure might thus appear. Sensi- 
tivity and consciousness are not identical. The 
brain does not need consciousness to record expe- 
rience, to anticipate experience, to bottle up expe- 
rience in the harmonious group action of neurones, 
or to compare and relate experiences by cross con- 
duction between these groups. 

In his essay on "A Pragmatic Substitute for 
Free Will" 1 Thorndike describes what may be tak- 
ing place among the neurones in any coordinated 
activity. Each neurone has its own life to live, 
with its three functions of nutrition, conduction 
and movement. The movement is of the dendrites 
or branching filaments at the extremity of the cell 
by which one cell is brought into contact with another 
and a conduction made possible. The conduction 

1. Essays Philosophical and Psychological in Honor of William James. 



70 Worship in the Sunday School 

of the nerve current is favorable to increased nutri- 
tion and the resulting state is favorable to continued 
movement. There is a kind of struggle for exist- 
ence among the neurones or cells. As long as con- 
duction and nutrition proceed, the movement which 
has been practiced will continue, that is, the con- 
nection will be maintained. If the other two func- 
tions are disturbed, the movement of the terminal 
processes and, therefore, the connection with the 
other cells will be changed. Over-stimulation de- 
creases nutrition and alters the connection, while 
normal stimulation increases nutrition and strength- 
ens the connection. 

By congenital equipment, certain stimulations 
from the environment affecting the sense organs, 
or stimulations from the chemical changes in the 
body are connected through the sensory and motor 
neurones with certain reactions, which, by natural 
selection, have been preserved in the line of devel- 
opment, because of their customary success in 
restoring chemical equilibrium. Certain other con- 
nections exist in a weaker degree, or in poten- 
tial, between sensory neurones and various motor 
cells. The sensory stimulus will discharge through 
first one connection and then another, with first 
one organic response and then another, until the 
reaction is made which removes the exciting cause; 
and the neurones which made the successful con- 
nection or movement, in draining off the whole 
surplus, will be best nourished, and this connection 
will therefore be best preserved. And so one might 



Feeling and Education 71 

account for connections between groups of neurones 
which we name the association of ideas. 

If all this seems to be too fantastic a notion, 
call to mind that strange instrument, the tele- 
graphone. A steel ribbon is so arranged in con- 
nection with a moving electromagnet that it will 
incorporate into its structure certain magnetic 
changes controlled by sound waves through the 
medium of a microphone. If the electromagnet 
is then connected with a telephone and again passed 
over the ribbon, the sounds, such as the words of 
a speech, are reproduced in perfect detail. Any 
number of speeches can be intermingled in the 
ribbon by slight changes in the apparatus, and 
afterwards reproduced separately as desired, by 
repeating the respective conditions of the recording. 1 
Yet compare the simplicity of that apparatus with 
the marvelous complexity of the nervous machinery 
of man. 

So much for this theory. But now as a matter 
of fact, the antecedent of any voluntary behavior 
includes a conscious as well as physiological ele- 
ment, and to deny the influence of consciousness 
is quite as radical as to deny the use of the brain. 
To apply a metaphor of Baldwin's 2 to my figure, the 
telegraphone does not function without the current. 
Unless it becomes magnetized in a certain way by 
the electric current it is not a telegraphone; it is 
simply a wire. Without consciousness there is no 
brain, but only an aggregate of chemical compounds. 

1. Scientific American, Vol. 89, p. 237, Vol. 88, p. 317. 

2. Baldwin, J. M., Development and Evolution, p. 130. 



72 Worship in the Sunday School 

What is lacking then in this creature that pre- 
sents the appearance of normal behavior even to 
adaptation to intricate and changing environments? 
Somehow he does not seem to possess that "snap" 
which MacVannel has described as distinguishing 
art from technic; there is no unifying principle, 
no spontaneity, no ontogenetic purpose. But sup- 
pose among the congenital variations there ever 
occurred, not a new connection between neurones, 
or a particular kind of nervous activity, but an 
esprit de corps, an organic satisfaction as an onto- 
genetic or individual value, on an entirely different 
plane from the phylogenetic value of mere existence. 
At this point sensitivity becomes feeling. This 
may indeed be present in the most primitive form 
of life, and it is none the less consciousness as an 
organic function, possessing the real dynamic of 
evolution without which, as we have seen, it is only 
barely conceivable that anything more complicated 
than an amoeba could have been produced. 1 But 
as soon as born, this germ of consciousness inverses 
its function and becomes, while still a means to 
race development, the end of individual existence 
in the feeling of satisfaction. 

But given this feeling, what does it do? How 
does it work back into the organism and so biologi- 
cally justify its existence? The condition of this 
satisfaction Thorndike has described as readiness 

1. Davidson, following Rosmini, regards some such feeling, rather in 
the form of desire and aversion than of satisfaction, as the fundamental 
principle of all existence, manifest in the physical world as gravitation and 
chemical affinity — the primeval forms of love and hate. History of Edu- 
cation, pp. 3-5. 



Feeling and Education 73 

of stimulated neurones to conduct a nerve current; 
but the condition of the neurones is not the satis- 
faction. No description can include the evaluation 
of an experience. If feeling does indeed work back 
it would almost seem that we shall have to abandon 
the law of the conservation of energy and admit 
that here at least something disappears from the 
physical and appears in the spiritual and that some- 
thing in the spiritual breaks in upon the natural 
order; or else regard the two orders as either both 
within matter, which is difficult, or within conscious- 
ness, which is hard to understand; or within a 
third something with which both are tending to 
become unified. The creation and destruction of 
energy would then be only apparent, since energy 
in the physical world and consciousness in the spir- 
itual world would be ultimately of the same order 
of existence. 

Although the what and the how of nervous action 
in consciousness are not known, attempts have been 
made to locate the cells concerned. The conscious- 
ness of feeling, or this satisfaction of which we were 
speaking, seems to have no definite localization, but 
is rather a correlate of certain general nervous con- 
ditions. A brief statement of Thorndike's argu- 
ment for the influence of satisfaction on conduct 
may not be out of place. 

1. Physiologically, behavior in higher animals is a struggle for 
existence among neurone connections. Habit is the survival of a 
connection. 

2. The main functions of neurone life are nutrition, movement 
and conduction, 



74 Worship in the Sunday School 

3. Modifiability of an animal, or the elimination and survival 
of connections, is due to the movements of the neurones only, 
that is, to certain arrangements of the terminal arborizations. 

4. A modifiable neurone acts as does any unicellular organism. 
When life activities proceed well, it continues the existing activity. 
When not, it makes such other responses as it is provided with. 
Action is probably limited to the terminal processes and the 
repertoire of acts is probably as narrow as in the amoeba. 

5. Activity in conduction puts neurones in the physiological 
state favorable to activity in nutrition, and this provokes a 
physiological state favorable to activity in movement. 

6. The parallel to discomfort is excessive stimulation to con- 
duction, that is, more stimulus than is at the time readily con- 
ducted off to other neurones. 

7. The parallel of satisfaction is normal stimulation to conduc- 
tion, that is, such stimulation as is at the time readily conducted 
off to other neurones. (Action without inhibition.) 

8. Over-stimulation of a neurone group decreases, and normal 
stimulation increases the temporary supply of food to the neurone 
system as a whole. 1 

. . . . But how? Here the defense passes 
admittedly beyond psychology into inference from 
the debilitating effect of pain and grief and the 
strengthening effect of pleasure, and the hypothesis 
that some such system could easily be evolved. 
Doubtless it has been evolved, but the interaction 
of consciousness and brain is left as much in the 
dark as ever. 

But the facts of organic evolution force us to 
retain the inference of some dynamic relation of 
consciousness to organic function, although psy- 
chology fails to give any adequate explanation of 
the process, for "parallelism explains nothing." 

1. Thorndike, essay cited. 



Feeling and Education 75 

And so the functional psychologists propose "psycho- 
physical unity," or "psycho-physical dualism" 1 
of function. Both consciousness and brain are 
involved in the same so-called conscious adjustment. 
It is not necessary to raise the question of which 
comes first or which causes the other or whether they 
alternately cause each other. The interest is in 
control and not in explanation — though the theory 
of the functional unity of brain and mind, while 
itself a mystery, can be used to explain the other- 
wise unaccountable progress of the race, by develop- 
ment of the individual and by "organic evolution." 2 

But more important is the social significance of 
consciousness as a signal of inner condition. We 
cannot get at the actual physical process concerned 
in any particular behavior. But we can name and 
describe the conscious process that is involved. 
The control of any mental state functionally involves 
the control of the correlated brain state. We can 
therefore let the nervous process take care of itself 
and give our attention to the conditions leading to 
the control of the mental process. We use the mind 
much as one would use a card index. Consciousness, 
in affording the signs of the physiological process, is 
the necessary requisite therefore not only of indi- 
vidual motivation, but also of educational influence. 

And so, to return to the matter of feeling, whether 

1. Baldwin, op. cit., p. 129. 

2. By "organic evolution" Baldwin means that accommodations selected 
through the influence of individual intelligence may keep a species afloat 
and so give a sort of intelligent direction to evolution. "The intelligence 
supplements slight co-adaptations and so gives them selective utility." 
"The future development at each stage of a species' evolution must be in 
the direction thus ratified by intelligence." Op. cit., pp. 98-99. 



76 Worship in the Sunday School 

or not its relation to conduct can ever be explained, 
its individual, social, and evolutionary significance 
remains. And if we know the kind of thing that 
produces annoyance or satisfaction, then the state 
of mind indicates the presence of these conditions 
and so becomes a means of social control. 

Of course this social control cannot be exercised 
until the primeval consciousness has widened out 
to include sensations, from which come perceptions 
and emotions and, later, conceptions, purposes and 
sentiments. Within the conscious stream these are 
all moving in the same direction or without any 
direction. They come and go. But the sensations 
and perceptions finally get associated with the outer- 
inner movement, and the feelings and desires and 
tendencies with the inner-outer movement; and 
so there gradually is developed a line of division 
between the me and the not-me which circumscribes 
this central exchange station of nerve currents. 
A hypothetical duplicate of the world exists within 
me. I possess an inner life of experience correspond- 
ing to what I conceive to be the outer reality. This 
inner experience I organize in such a way that it 
can be used to anticipate the sequence of events and 
include within itself the new events. When this 
stage is reached, the means are perfected for ade- 
quately communicating states of satisfaction or 
annoyance, and for obtaining the one and avoiding 
the other. 



Feeling and Education 77 

The Functional View of Feeling and the Place 
of Feeling in Education 

One form of this social control is education, by 
which the past is brought forward into the structure 
of a new generation and so is carried on into the 
future. It has been the great object of education 
to teach concepts of the materials and methods of 
social activity, to train the mind how to think about 
things, and, with more and more emphasis, to learn 
how to do things and to gain the actual ability and 
technic in doing thefa. Concern has been given to 
both the analytic and the constructive aspects of 
conscious activity, but little to the appreciation, 
which, after all, lends significance to and is therefore 
one large source of all other activity. 

And by appreciation I mean the personal attitude. 
It includes intellectual factors as data, but its judg- 
ments are of Value and not of Fact, and they take 
the form of assertions rather than of syllogisms. 
They are immediate rather than mediated. They 
concern faith rather than knowledge; art, rather 
than science. They are fundamental conscious 
reactions and some would give them full sway over 
all of life. But this seems like a denial of educability, 
for it is assumed in education that there has been a 
critical selection of material according to social 
value, and social value is based on a judgment 
concerning the usefulness of certain acts or things 
for the increase of social control and social harmony. 
The validity of any idea is that it can be held by 



78 Worship in the Sunday School 

others. A statement about a thing is a fact when 
others under the same conditions can have an iden- 
tifiably similar experience. So the social validity 
of a value is that others shall appreciate the same 
value. Those which are the common possession of 
the controlling administrative forces are made the 
ends of education. But these highest values do not 
seem to possess the same universality and vigor as 
do the facts of science, and it is surely partly because 
feeling is not made a sufficiently definite object of 
education. 

Before turning to the more detailed psychology 
of feeling and its application to education, it may be 
worth our while to consider where we are to look for 
some universal criterion of progress, by which edu- 
cation can be judged, and from which education may 
derive its aims. 

In the essay already referred to, Thorndike finds 
this criterion and aim in the word Satisfaction. 
Satisfaction is not only a means by which learning 
is facilitated, but it is the end of all learning, the 
standard of all value, the source of all value. Prog- 
ress is therefore guaranteed. The millennium is a 
necessary product of human nature. "Just as the 
world at large," he says, "is so constituted as to 
produce increasingly those aggregations of matter 
which possess life, so the nervous system may be 
so constituted as to produce increasingly those 
neural arrangements which possess satisfyingness. " 
But does this relieve us of the necessity of judging 
all products and processes of nature by intellectual 



Feeling and Education 79 

standards? Thorndike may be emphasizing over- 
much the sphere of judgments of value. If there 
were no such thing as education, but each individual 
were left to grow up of his own accord, his satis- 
faction would be per se the only motive. But 
through education, satisfaction can be attached to 
many different kinds of reactions, and the child can 
be taught to find his motives, therefore, in what will 
be of greatest service to the satisfaction of posterity. 
But the only guarantee that he will be taught this 
and not something harmful to society is that adults 
shall themselves find satisfaction in teaching the 
kind of acts which satisfy them personally or the 
kind which they imagine would bring greater satis- 
faction to later generations than they themselves 
attained. All this presupposes the superior satis- 
fyingness of ideals, the dominating power over my 
personal life of my imagination of the kind of life 
that would bring satisfaction to my children. But 
where do these ideals come from? Thorndike has 
urged that utility produces nothing. Satisfaction 
fixes variations; it does not cause them. It is 
therefore a conservative and not a progressive force. 
It is the source of desire only so far as desire does 
not rise above experience. It serves as a ratchet to 
prevent the wheel of social advance from slipping 
backward, but it does not turn it forward. But 
as he himself says, variations do occur, both in 
thought and conduct, and these he attributes to the 
general constitution of the Creator, of the world as 
a whole. The guarantee of Meliorism or progress 



80 Worship in the Sunday School 

is therefore made twofold: variation, and modi- 
fiability in the direction of satisfaction. 

But in all this, Satisfaction does not have much 
content. What is it that is satisfied and with what 
is it satisfied? I suppose it must be the Self! But 
if so, what part of the self? Instincts, emotions, 
intellect, or all together? Do we find our highest, 
our most complete satisfaction in intellectual activity 
and is the process of reason or intellectual selection 
conducive to as well as based upon satisfaction? 
If so, then satisfaction is no longer a usable term, 
but must be replaced by intellectual terms such as 
consistency, logical necessity, truth, and so on. The 
thing will most satisfy us which is consistent with 
our philosophy of life, and this philosophy will 
tend to be perpetuated from generation to generation 
and modified and enlarged in the direction of unity 
and completeness. As the middle term between an 
outer world of fact and an inner world of feeling, it 
will become the standard of educational theory, 
because in it is found the dynamic of highest satis- 
faction; in it the purpose of education is formulated. 
All our institutions and practices will gradually be 
made to conform to our prevailing philosophy and 
our prevailing philosophy will necessarily evolve 
into a universal system which will serve as the source 
and criterion of the aims of education. 



Feeling and Education 81 

FEELING AS SATISFACTION OR DISSATISFACTION 

The Functional View of Feeling 1 

The physiological approach will point out the 
shortest road to a clear idea of feeling. The human 
brain is not born a tabula rasa, but there are already 
formed within it certain connections or tendencies 
to connections between the presentation of certain 
situations and some motor response more or less 
definite. We are to suppose that certain neurones 
in the sensory area of the brain are, by whatever 
theory you please, connected with other neurones 
in the motor area, in such a way as to form a line of 
least resistance for a nerve current. Or, to state it 
in another way, certain motor neurones are at birth 
more ready to act, more unstable, than others, and 
these are so connected with sets of neurones of sen- 
sory function that the action of the latter acts as 
a cue, a spark, to set off the others. Thus there are 
more or less definite bonds between situations and 
acts, as when the eye winks at the approach of 
something thrown through the air. These connec- 

1 A word as to terms. (1) Pain and pleasure. Although there may be 
no organs of pleasure, there probably are organs of pain, of the sensation 
pain, which may therefore be either pleasant or unpleasant. Pain is thus 
not strictly the opposite of pleasure, but the word is generally so used. (2) 
The number or dimension of affective states. There is a variety of opinion 
regarding the number of feelings, or the dimension of feeling, as Wundt 
calls it. Most authors subscribe to only one pair, pleasure-pain. Wundt, 
however, postulates two others, excitement-calm and tension-relief. Titch- 
ener regards both the second and third pairs as due to organic sensations, 
but Royce retains the second, calling it restlessness-quiescence. (3) The 
terms satisfaction and dissatisfaction as used by Thorndike do not seem to 
be exactly the equivalents of pleasure and displeasure, for pleasure may be 
unsatisfactory and pain may bring comfort. Pleasure and pain are per- 
haps descriptions of the feeling tone of a particular mental process, while 
the other terms apply to the tone in which that process terminates. But 
as the mental process as a whole does not end with the conclusion of a par- 
ticular reaction, the terms are relative and overlap. 



82 Worship in the Sunday School 

tions do not all appear at once, but develop in an 
observable series. To use Thorndike's terminology, 
they include such responses as sensitivity; gross 
manipulation of the body; food-getting, including 
hunting acts; sex behavior; shelter-getting; imme- 
diate defense, including fear and anger; many social 
responses, such as tenderness, gregariousness, mas- 
tery and submission, emulation, imitation, and so 
on; minor body manipulations, including the hand- 
ling of small objects; vocalization; and learning. 1 
Certain situations seem to be originally satisfying or 
annoying. Among the chief annoyers are pain, grief, 
loneliness, disapproval. The satisfiers include cer- 
tain tastes and motions; approval; knowledge of the 
satisfaction of others, and so on. But the successful 
and unhindered execution of any original response 
tends to be satisfying. Success, however, is meas- 
ured in terms of satisfaction, so that it is not enough 
to call satisfaction the state of successful effort or 
resulting from successful effort. Thorndike finds a 
sort of common denominator in the readiness or 
unreadiness of neurones to act. Satisfaction as a 
psychic state attends the action of ready neurones, 
that is, their reduction to a more stable equilibrium; 
and dissatisfaction attends the prevention of such 
action, or the forcing of unready neurones to act. 
Now this readiness of cells to act may be the result 
of the stimulation of the first of a series or organized 
group of cells. That is, a complete response to a 
situation may consist of a sequence of acts, as when 

1. Cf. Thorndike, Education, Chap. V. 



Feeling and Education 83 

food getting involves cautious approach, seizing, 
tearing and eating. The presentation of the situa- 
tion puts in readiness the series of cells necessary for 
the performance of these acts in sequence. Now, 
if the cells are allowed to conduct the current and 
the body performs the acts, satisfaction is present; 
if not, there is dissatisfaction, as for instance when 
a bone is snatched from the reach of a dog when he 
is about to pounce upon it. The pain neurones are 
perhaps habitually unready to act; witness the com- 
parative slowness of the transmission of the sensa- 
tion of heat over that of touch. We feel the stove 
as hard before we feel it as hot. This forcing of 
the unready neurones is painful. Or again, com- 
pelling ourselves to exercise when fatigued may be 
disagreeable. 

It will be seen that the same principle applies 
also to connections which are learned. And here 
it may be well to recall how new connections are 
learned, how new ways of doing things are acquired. 
The factors involved are, the tendency to make 
various responses; exercise; and feeling. The spe- 
cific movements are not thought through before- 
hand, but are selected from a variety of experimental 
responses. This variety is supplied in many ways: 
from the original tendency to respond in several 
ways to the same situation; from the instinct of 
general manipulation; from habit; and from the 
capacity to respond to different elements in the 
situation. A situation may be a complicated one and 
start going several responses which may conflict with 



84 Worship in the Sunday School 

one another. For example, suppose a large man 
suddenly accosting a child. His size and attack at 
once tend to make the child afraid. But the situa- 
tion is partial, for instead of a fierce frown and threat- 
ening gestures there is a friendly smile and a kind 
word. The response is therefore altered to one of 
submissiveness or play. In these ways an enormous 
variety of adaptations is given from which to select. 
The selective factors are Use and Feeling. The 
actual passage of the nerve current along certain 
channels or by way of certain neurones makes it 
easier for it to go that way again. And success in 
the outcome has a similar effect. The successful act 
leaves its traces as any act would. But the success- 
ful culmination of the act is accompanied by an 
organic satisfaction or subconscious satisfaction 
which inhibits further experimenting. The success- 
ful traces are thus not obliterated by the effects of 
further random reactions. 1 Opportunity is given 
for the fixation of the right connection. This 
organic satisfaction is accompanied by heightened 
tonicity, which is favorable to the rapid organiza- 
tion of the neurones. The conscious pleasure reacts 
again as a conative tendency like the act that brought 
success. The neurones are incipiently if not com- 
pletely excited just as they were before, and this 
tends to deepen the connection. This effect of the 
resulting satisfaction Thorndike regards as the most 
influential factor in the selection and fixation of 
learned connections. 

1. Cf. Swift, E. J., Mind in the Making, pp. 213-216. 



Feeling and Education 85 

What, then, is the dynamic relation of feeling to 
experience? Where, as we asked above, does it 
come in in the nerve cycle from objective to objec- 
tive? As a matter of fact, all we can measure is 
action, and what goes on between the presentation 
and the act is for the most part speculative interpre- 
tation of introspection. The central processes 
constitute a sort of reservoir into which the nerve 
system pumps sensations and out of which it pumps 
acts. Just what goes on in the turmoil of the muddy 
cistern is uncertain. The water is always stirred 
up, for the pumps never cease till death. Perhaps 
then we shall know. Meanwhile, just as the fisher- 
man looks down into the water through his glass- 
bottomed bucket, so we gaze as through a glass 
darkly into the mystery of our own minds — and 
sometimes we imagine we see strange, primordial 
creatures swimming about in the shadows. What 
we cannot see we call the subliminal, the subcon- 
scious. There belong the weird race-memories, the 
record of the travail of creation, which were better 
forgotten than called out of the dark past to be 
given the reverence that belongs not to mystery but 
to divinity, to the God of the living and not the 
God of the dead. 

The simple fact is we live, and our life consists in 
acting, thinking and feeling in the midst of our 
environment. How we act depends on many things : 
on all the complex influences of the situation; on 
the way we have acted before to the elements of this 
situation; on the thoughts which are suggested as 



86 Worship in the Sunday School 

part of the response to the situation, and which by 
their presence alter its meaning to us and so make 
of it a continually changing situation; and by the 
feelings which these thoughts have accompanied and 
which have turned the balance of past action this 
way or that, and so made possible the present possi- 
bilities of action — which consist of all the tenden- 
cies that have survived from the sifting process of 
experience. 

As Royce 1 puts it, we cannot will a novel course 
of action, but only an act done before. Consequences 
may be foreseen as novel, but choice is unoriginal. 
Familiar means must be found. Before we possess 
a will we must act by original tendency. These 
acts we notice and select from, that is, will. Invol- 
untary acts, unwilled acts, depend for their selection 
on feeling, which is thus a more primitive and less 
accurate means of adjustment. Its categories of 
choice are only two, or at most six, whereas the 
intellectual meanings are infinite. Feeling has the 
advantage in selecting organic adjustments too subtle 
to appear in consciousness as ideas, or too gross to 
demand fine analysis. Ideas, being biologically 
more recent, have not mastered all the intricacies of 
organic function, and indeed are rendered more 
free by this activity of feeling. And now that 
neural excitements are accompanied by ideas, feeling 
is not dropped out, but features also in the associa- 
tion of the ideational neurones (if there be such). 
Intellect and feeling go hand in hand in selecting 

I. Outlines of Psychology, p. 369. 



Feeling and Education 87 

forms of activity for survival. Sensation is given, 
and out of it is built the reproduction of experience 
in images and concepts. These are not bound to 
sensations, but may be associated in innumerable 
ways, guided by use and by feeling. The ideas 
transcend empirical experience by offering a variety 
of possible courses of action, which function as actual 
situations calling for responses. Feeling is conserva- 
tive and empirical and among possibilities of action 
chooses not what is likely a priori to give satisfaction, 
but what has given satisfaction in the past. 

Without feeling the stengthening of association 
between thoughts and acts and among thoughts 
would be limited to the effects of mere repetition. 
One association would be as strong as another equally 
used, no matter how erroneous it had proved to be. 
There would be no true economy of action through 
the registering of success in satisfaction and the 
resulting strengthening of successful connections. 
The past could not be brought to function efficiently 
in the present. Again, if there were only feeling 
and no ideas, reactions would be only to objective 
situations, and to these only in wholes. There 
would be no organization of experience in terms of 
purpose or ideal, no intellectual anticipation of 
experience, no selection of the essential aspect out 
of a whole situation, or recombining of the elements 
of experience into a tool for dealing with the novel 
and strange. But even so, the physiological condi- 
tions of feeling as a conscious state may be of 
wider range and involve a larger number of neurones 



88 Worship in the Sunday School 

than those concerned with ideas, so that the range 
of environment subject to the limited adjustments 
of feeling may be greater than that reached by the 
more complex adjustments of intellect. 

Intellect has not superseded feeling nor is feeling 
a higher faculty than intellect. They cooperate in 
any conscious adjustment to physical environment 
and in all adjustments to things of the spirit. Will 
implies such a successful combination of feeling and 
thought elements as will function in controlling 
action, or more directly in controlling attention. 1 
Feeling is operative in helping to determine what 
sensations or ideas shall continue in the field or focus 
of consciousness, although it is itself not the object 
of attention. Deliberate action is impossible with- 
out both feeling and intellect, the one to draw, the 
other to color the pictured act. The feeling of 
effort is present when, instead of taking the course 
made ready in the neurones by the immediate 
situation, a more roundabout course is pursued, made 
ready by the presence, in the mind, of an ideal acting 
as a telescope to make as though present a remote 
situation. When the act follows the latter course 
we call it willed action, or deliberate action. The 
degree of effort will correspond to the readiness of 
the one set of neurones as compared with that of the 
other. 

Judd 2 describes another selective aspect of feeling. 

1. On feeling and attention cf. also Titchener, Psychology of Feeling 
and Attention, pp. 298-303; Judd, Journ. Philos. Psych. Sci. Meth., Vol. V, 
p. 676, and also Psychology, p. 66; Stout, Groundwork of Psychology, 
Chap. III. 

2. Psychology, p. 362. 



Feeling and Education 89 

Whatever runs against the organization of the indi- 
vidual is disagreeable and vice versa. But agree- 
ment is not necessarily in consciousness as idea; 
it may be present as feeling. Feeling becomes 
therefore spontaneous adjustment. It is allied here 
with intuition or the immediate form of the recogni- 
tion of incongruity. It is thus seen that feeling 
does not give us any new concepts. It is simply a 
signal of adjustment, and does not say how to change. 
It is the gong in the engine room which calls the 
engineer's attention to the signal board, the indica- 
tions of which are dictated, not by feeling, but by 
sensation. We attend to the reports of sensation 
because of the feeling which the outflowing current 
let loose by the sensations has aroused in us. 

We may sum up the functional view of feeling by 
saying that it belongs with the outgoing aspect of 
experience. It is a part of the individual's reaction 
to his mental and physical situation. It is primarily 
related to the complex subjective organizations or 
reactions of the individual upon his environment as 
it is made known to him through sensations. The 
"feeling" of the organism is the "attitude" it takes 
toward the situations within which it is placed. 1 

Feeling and Mental Efficiency 

The importance of feeling in mental efficiency can 
hardly be overestimated. The readiness of many 
neurones to act, which is the source of fertility of 

1. Judd, article cited above. For a most able discussion of Feeling, see 
Hocking, Meaning of God in Human Experience, Part II, "Religious Feel- 
ing and Religious Theory." 



90 Worship in the Sunday School 

mind, may also be a cause of lesser buoyancy of 
spirit; for not all neurones can act, and some, there- 
fore, must contribute their quota of dissatisfaction 
to the whole state. Rapidity and success in associa- 
tion of ideas, sought for the purpose of solving some 
problem, certainly are attended by and enhanced by 
pleasure, because of the action of ready neurones to 
a terminus. Vain groping or unsuccessful brain 
action, and the continued thwarting of decision by 
the inhibiting influence of many conflicting ideas, 
the suspended judgment (which means untermi- 
nated action) — all these tend to be unpleasant. This, 
in part, accounts for the contrast in disposition 
between the man of thought and the man of action, 
the reflective and the impulsive types. The former 
is likely to be somewhat depressed and the latter to 
be of more happy frame of mind. There is room here 
also for the feelings of tension and relief, excitement 
and calm. A feeling of relief and calm may accom- 
pany the successful termination of an act and the 
resulting rest of the neurones; whereas tension and 
excitement go with the continual shooting of currents 
in all directions, following first one ready circuit and 
then another, and finding no successful outlet. 
Excitement may go with pleasure, because pleasure 
itself tends to further action, and there is a desire 
for more and more, and a search for means to attain 
it. This is usually the situation when an anticipated 
pleasure is presented to the mind. Satisfaction is 
present, but excitement is more conspicuous in 
consciousness, because of the advance stimulation 



Feeling and Education 91 

of neurones which are prevented temporarily from 
acting. This is the state of desire. The fulfilling 
of desire is accompanied by satisfaction and relief 
and calm. The neurones have been reduced from 
instability to a condition of comparative equilibrium. 

It may be, therefore, that much of the blueness 
and ineffectiveness of those who deal with ideas 
critically (which means a postponement of their 
issue in some success or satisfaction) is due, not only 
to fatigue products, but also to that quality of the 
brain which requires for its tonicity the productive 
activity of trains of neurones once incipiently stimu- 
lated. Thought militates against itself unless it 
"arrives. ' ' This is recognized in the learning process 
where care is taken to insure successful effort as a 
condition for progress. 

The difficulty of the situation can be overcome in 
many ways. It is not a situation which can be 
removed, as it is inherent in the critical activity of 
the mind. But its bad effects can be more or less 
overcome by the functioning of mood. If successful 
activity is postponed in one direction, it can be 
encouraged in another, and the resulting pleasure 
will function in raising the neural tone and in restor- 
ing spice and vigor to the whole conscious process. 
Thus we have a substitute for the immediate solution 
of problems as a condition for healthy progress. 
This result can be attained by either physical or 
mental means. The physical have an advantage in 
involving also factors of circulation and elimination. 
The mental assist by providing for the activity of 



92 Worship in the Sunday School 

more nearly related neurones, or even of the same 
neurones. The writing of papers corresponds to 
tasks done and carries with it the feeling of com- 
pletion, even while the investigation of the problem 
is progressing. It serves incidentally to organize 
the material in hand and to render it more serviceable 
— but that contributes to the feeling of satisfaction 
even in the presence of actual incompleteness, and 
stirs on the mind to continue its attack. Tests 
accomplish the same thing if they are not so hard 
as to cause discouragement. All learning may include 
periods of confusion and retardation during which 
the material is being digested and organized, and 
which, therefore, are blue periods. The bad effect 
of the mood can be counteracted by some form of 
successful activity, without interfering with the 
process of organization, and in this way the general 
working efficiency will not be lowered, and time will 
not be unnecessarily lost. 

This aspect of feeling is thus seen to be related to 
educational theory in at least three respects: (1) 
In the learning process, in which it is used directly or 
in association to strengthen desirable and weaken 
undesirable connections. (2) In the control of 
attention in the mapping out and pursuance of 
future courses of action, in which it is vital that 
socially valuable acts and objects should be those 
which are desired and consciously striven for. (3) 
In the attainment of the highest mental efficiency. 



Feeling and Education 93 

EMOTION 

Emotion has been called the conscious correlate 
of instinct. But, as Pillsbury 1 puts it, emotion is 
limited to responses ending in the body. Angell, 2 
too, accepts the James-Lange theory to this extent 
and regards emotions as due to intra-organic reac- 
tions. Stout, 3 however, holds that the distinguish- 
ing characteristics of each emotion are located in 
the primary nervous excitement, and uses James' 
arguments against James to show that emotions are 
not fundamentally sensations, but points of view, 
attitudes toward objects. He does admit, though, 
that the situation causes a neural disturbance, and so 
allows sensational concomitants to enter in. He 
places emotion primarily in the category of feeling 
as Miss Calkins 4 and Judd 5 do. 

Among original tendencies are those which involve, 
as a part of their reactions, certain organic changes 
and inner muscular contractions in addition to those 
of external adjustment. Of the usefulness of these 
inner movements there is some question, although 
in part they are probably vestiges of originally use- 
ful acts. 6 At the present stage of evolution they 
seem at times to be per se physically useless or harm- 
ful, or available socially as signs of feeling; mentally 
they add their sensational content to the richness of 

1. Pillsbury, Essentials of Psychology, p. 272 ff. 

2. Psychology, pp. 370 and 381. 

3. Groundwork of Psychology, Chap. XV. 

4. An Introduction to Psychology, p. 263. 

5. Psychology, p. 298. 

6. Cf. Dewey, " Theory of Emotions " cited above, Psychological Review 
Nov. 1894, p. 553. 



94 Worship in the Sunday School 

consciousness. It is claimed by some that these or- 
ganic changes would not occur if some one response 
to the emotional situation were allowed to take place. 
But, as a matter of fact, there is a great conflict 
among tendencies to reaction, due to the plasticity 
of original nature, but mostly to the influence of 
habit and changed conditions of life. Consequently 
the nervous discharge that might have been used up 
in some useful response is drained off in the more au- 
tomatic channels of the circulatory or digestive sys- 
tems, or into the more involuntary circuits of facial 
expression, blushing and so on. The actual con- 
scious state is a strange complex of acute feeling, of 
definite attitude toward the situation, modified or 
enriched by all kinds of organic sensations, which, 
with the actual consciousness of the provoking situa- 
tion, give to the emotion its specific character. 

Emotion is thus a phase of maladjustment, and 
occurs when the individual is wavering between dif- 
ferent courses of action. The situation is usually 
one which presents itself suddenly, or with intense 
contrasts, and this makes the immediate adjustment 
difficult. "Emotion is a complex state of conscious- 
ness of high affective coloring, involving an intellec- 
tual and a will attitude, appearing under sudden 
stress in a rapidly developing situation, either actu- 
ally present or ideally represented, to which situa- 
tion adequate adjustment is temporarily blocked. 
This whole state is accompanied by bodily sensa- 
tions of great intensity." From this point of view 
emotion at first sight seems harmful, for all mal- 



Feeling and Education 95 

adjustment is undesirable. Emotion seems to pre- 
vent adjustment by confusing the individual. And 
considered all by itself, the emotional experience is 
bad. Whatever value it possesses must be looked 
for either in the effect of its expression on other in- 
dividuals, or in the result within the subject himself. 
For example, furious anger may have been very 
useful in intimidating a foe. But the effect on the 
individual is temporarily to wipe out old habits or 
ways of reacting, and so make room for new modes 
of adjustment. Old paths are blocked and new ones 
opened up. Old ideas are cast out and opportunity 
is given for acquiring new points of view. In re- 
ligious conversion, for example, it often happens that 
old habits cannot be conquered without some such 
upheaval and confusion being passed through. The 
reprobate must be plunged into fear and doubt and 
despair before he can be led to adopt a new attitude 
and rise above his old habits. So the waste of energy 
in the intense emotional experience is justified when 
the higher levels of conduct and attitude can be 
reached only in this way. 

When an emotion is gone, a residue or mood is 
often left which tends to vanish as the adjustment 
reached becomes more and more habitual. To keep 
up the mood, the emotional experience must occa- 
sionally be revived. This can often be done by a 
mild repetition of the emotion, in which the affective 
and intellectual elements are clear cut, and in which 
the loss of balance is not noticeable. 1 

1. This paragraph with the one preceding summarizes the view of Col- 
vin, in an unpublished lecture. Cf . Human Behavior, by the same author. 



96 Worship in the Sunday School 

Indeed it is in this milder sense that the word 
emotion is usually used, and it is in this milder form 
that we have most to do with it in education. But 
now and then it may be worth while to go the whole 
way and freshen up the life adjustment from the 
very roots. 

The general effect of an extreme emotional expe- 
rience is exhausting. But a mild emotion, because 
of its affective element, may leave either a restful 
or stimulating effect on the one hand, or else a fa- 
tiguing and depressing effect on the other. Emo- 
tions are sufficiently differentiated in these respects 
to allow of a general classification. On the one side 
are physically helpful and socially useful, and on the 
other, physically harmful and socially injurious. Any 
emotional reaction may be more fatiguing than one 
which is calm, but it may carry with it advantages 
which outweigh the fatigue. Others may be exhila- 
rating for the moment, but may result in exhaustion. 
But on the whole we can put on the socially or indi- 
vidually helpful side the emotions of joy, courage, 
love, sympathy, tenderness, reverence, trust. What- 
ever their physical correlates, these emotions add 
vastly to the satisfaction of life, increase its efficiency, 
and render social relations in which they arise and 
to which they tend not only tolerable but delightful. 
They are the sine qua non of social cooperation and 
physical health. On the harmful side are, in general, 
anger, hate, fear, grief, greed, scorn and so on. These 
exhaust the energy, often without offering any return. 
They sap the life, not only of the individual subject, 



Feeling and Education 97 

but of those who chance to be the unfortunate ob- 
jects. They poison the body and the social group, 
and militate against all efficiency. The need is evi- 
dent therefore of cultivating the former or more social 
type of emotions, and of discouraging or guiding the 
latter. 

The recognition of the difference in the social 
value of emotions led the defenders of the Tightness 
of original nature to claim for certain undesirable 
tendencies one or all of three functions. 

1. The undesirable tendency may be a prerequisite of the 
desirable, acting as a stimulus to the next higher power. Hence 
all latent responses should be developed. 

2. A bad tendency may be desirable as a necessary correlate 
of a good tendency; for example, anger and righteous indigna- 
tion; jealousy and love; fighting or hate and honor. 

3. The exercise of an undesirable tendency is useful if its early 
satisfaction leads to inoculation or protection from the same ten- 
dency in the future. Stimulus and exercise atrophy the tendency 
and allow it to give place to the next higher power. 1 

This theory of Catharsis is extended by G. Stan- 
ley Hall to include the imaginative experience of 
evil in reading, and so on, as a prophylactic measure, 
analogous to vaccination. 

However true the first two claims may be, the last, 
as Thorndike has pointed out, is seen to be quite 
contrary to the law of exercise and habit, and to 
need more proof before it can be accepted even as 
an hypothesis. But the genetic, or correlative neces- 
sity for the exercise of a tendency does not preclude 

1. Cited by Thorndike in an unpublished lecture on Educational Psy- 
chology. 



98 Worship in the Sunday School 

the direction of it to socially desirable objects, and 
the gradual substitution of other more helpful re- 
sponses. And it is hard to be convinced that there 
is as much need for hate in the world as there is 
for affection, or that affection is impossible without 
hate. 

The question is a complicated one as is shown by 
the work of Shand in the analysis of emotional de- 
velopment. One or two examples will suffice. 

Sorrow as a primary emotion is made essential to the more 
complicated emotion of pity, which when thwarted in its helpful 
endeavor becomes despondency or despair. Tenderness comes 
from the interaction of joy and sorrow. Gratitude is tender joy. 
It involves not only joy in the benefaction, but also a touch 
of sorrow for the implied sacrifice of the benefactor. Again, 
reverence is a complicated emotion involving awe and tender- 
ness. Tenderness we have already seen to be joy and sorrow 
mixed. Awe is admiration plus fear. Admiration is wonder 
plus submissiveness. 1 

So we have the primary emotions of wonder and 
fear, joy and sorrow, in a strange mixture of good 
and bad to make the valued state called reverence. 
This illustrates the complication. Fear on the whole 
we would discard, yet if it is a necessary concomi- 
tant of reverence, a sweeping expurgation of human 
nature that would altogether eliminate fear, would 
be dangerous. The secret of the solution is surely 
in the connection of the emotions with the right 
sort of situations. 

Thorndike discusses briefly the various ways of 

1. In Stout, Groundwork of Psychology, Chap. XVI. 



Feeling and Education 99 

training the emotions in his "Principles of Teach- 
ing." 1 Quoting in part : 

"To arouse a given emotion in connection with a given situa- 
tion we may use one of three methods. 

1. Ideas that have in the past been connected with the emotion 
may be aroused. . . . 

2. The emotion may be communicated through imitation." 
For example, through suggestion from facial and vocal expressions 
and so on. 

3. "The bodily response characteristic of the emotion may be 
aroused." For example, courageous conduct assists the feeling 
of courage. 

One might add, the habit of the analysis and the 
right naming of the situation and the association of 
the new name with all similar situations. 2 That is, 
a situation calling for an angry response is to be ap- 
perceived as one calling for a loving or humorous 
response. The too-familiar jibe is called a joke in- 
stead of an insult, with the response of a laugh in- 
stead of an angry retort. 

The importance of mood is obvious. A mood, as 
has been said, is the residue of an emotion, or a ten- 
dency to react in the same emotional way to any 
situation. Joy and grief are the most persistent 
types, no doubt because of their corresponding ef- 
fects on the whole nervous system. The emotion 
experienced tends to repeat itself by prejudging all 
situations and favoring like responses to all. This 

1. P. 199. 

2. Thorndike himself mentions this feature of the naming of a situation 
in his chapter on the training of conduct, but does not suggest it as a method 
in the training of emotion. 



100 Worship in the Sunday School 

is due to the readiness of neurones to act. They are 
very unready to act when the state is one of grief. 
The rupture of so many connections involves, also, 
the failure of many ready tracts, with a resulting 
depression and lowered tonicity which results in the 
deadening of the whole system. Joy, on the con- 
trary, lends the color of success to all endeavor, and 
therefore is a mood to be cultivated. Fear inhibits, 
except so far as its response includes the usual run- 
ning, hiding, fighting, and so on. It is an unsocial 
state of mind and is associated with destructive 
events and acts. Appearing as anxiety when the 
situation is remote, it functions to center the interest 
of life in the preservation of self, and thus to restrict 
the field of mental action. This may not be true 
of anxiety for others, which is social in its direc- 
tion, although involving inhibiting influence such as 
worry. When thus directed it is more truly allied 
to the tender or altruistic emotion than to fear. 

To inculcate or encourage the expansive, stimu- 
lating and restful ways of emotional response and to 
eliminate so far as possible the depressing, exhaust- 
ing emotional moods is therefore an important part 
of the task of education. 

SENTIMENT 1 

Sentiment is a much abused word. Psychologists 
have not given much attention to it. Judd calls it 
feeling related to so-called higher concepts. Some 

1. Cf. Shand, "Character and the Emotions," Mind, N.S., Vol. V, 
1896, pp. 217-224. 



Feeling and Education 101 

use it as a name for a sort of refined emotion. Oth- 
ers limit it to those emotions connected with art and 
religion. Stout 1 calls it interest in an object for its 
own sake regardless of its advantage to us. Such 
interests rise out of the use of the object as a means 
to some satisfaction and are an instance of the trans- 
formation of means into end. They develop out 
of feeling, emotion and conation, and become the 
source of such activity. He describes them as con- 
crete or abstract. The concrete sentiments are for in- 
dividuals or a group of individuals — Home, School, 
Country, etc. The abstract are for general features 
of concrete experience such as power, fame, justice, 
truth, etc. These may be selfish, as in pride, vanity, 
love of fame; or unselfish, as in devotion, economy, 
order, neatness, sincerity, hate of wrong. There is a 
tendency to personify the abstract sentiments as in 
Freedom, Duty, Truth, and the like. 

As another writer has put it, sentiment is an esti- 
mate or feeling of value which results from choice or 
investment. For example, a man chooses a political 
party; he invests his interests in that party. He 
chooses a profession and the decision means an 
investment in the object. The resulting feeling 
of ownership which controls his thinking is called 
sentiment. It is sometimes called the Heart. It 
cannot be changed per se but can only follow the 
investment. It is a gradual growth, implying the 
accumulation of habits which are congenial to it. 
Sentiment does not depend on the intrinsic value of 

1. Op. cit., Chap. XVII, p. 224 ff. 



10£ Worship in the Sunday School 

the object. Compare class-feeling. It has nothing 
to do with the character of the members, but de- 
pends primarily on the fact that it is your class and 
you have invested all your college interests with it. 
A man can be a staunch member of a national party 
in spite of political machines. 

And best of all illustrations is the domestic senti- 
ment. It takes more than affinity, whether of cul- 
tural interests or physique, or love or educational 
congeniality, to hold a family together. The strength 
of the domestic relation depends upon the domestic 
sentiment and that is in direct proportion to the 
investment made. If it is a ten-year experiment 
the chances are that it will not last as long as that. 
If it is for life, the sentiment resulting from the 
investment will tide over the many inevitable dis- 
agreements and bind together the seemingly in- 
compatible. Our supreme choices determine our 
sentiments, and once created, our highest sentiments 
control our minor choices automatically. 1 

In another place 2 the same author speaks of sen- 
timents as the acquired interests in contrast with 
the native interests. They result from identifying 
oneself with a cause so that all interest in the self is 
transferred to the cause. The cause owns the man. 3 

With all the other feelings sentiment is thus seen 
to belong to the volitional or active direction of con- 
sciousness. It is an attitude which accompanies and 
grows out of the conscious direction of activity in 

1. Garman, C. E., Letters, Lectures and Addresses, Memorial Volume, 
p. 265 ff. 2. Op cit., p. 401 ff. 

3. Cf. the analysis of loyalty in Chap. IV of this book, 



Feeling and Education 103 

accordance with some purpose or ideal. It is a kind 
of anticipated satisfaction which attaches itself to 
all kinds of acts, whether painful or not, because of 
their relation as means to the end desired. By it 
therefore the disagreeable drudgery of life can be 
largely transfigured and made to glow with the white 
heat of enthusiastic devotion to a noble cause. This 
means an enormous accession of power through the 
stimulating as well as restful effect of completely 
satisfactory living. 

The cultivation of sentiment, then, as the enthu- 
siastic devotion to great causes and the aban- 
donment of self-interest in the interest of social 
enterprises, is part of the task of education. 

ESTHETIC APPRECIATION 

Esthetic appreciation involves more of life than 
is often realized, though it is hard to state just what 
it is. All would probably agree that it is concerned 
with one's attitude toward the formal elements in 
experience. That is, it is a feeling of satisfaction or 
the reverse in the presence of proportion and har- 
mony in color, form or sound. Or as Dewey puts it 
in his "Psychology," it is the feeling of satisfaction 
in the objective presentation of any harmonious 
ideal. It is concerned, he says, with the process of 
uttering an idea, involving harmony, or variety in 
unity, adaptation to the sense organs, economy of 
presentation, subordination to one purpose, and 
simplicity. Practically any experience we have is 
capable of being described, therefore, as beautiful or 



104 Worship in the Sunday School 

ugly, according as it is significant of the ideal pos- 
sessed by the mind. It is the appreciation of beauty 
which leads to creative activity, or the effort to pro- 
duce an admirable whole rather than to analyze an 
existing whole. It is the esthetic appreciation of 
wholeness which leads men to create great systems 
of thought or to organize the fragmentary elements of 
experience into articulated organizations of science. 
There are artists in science, engineering, business 
and religion as well as in literature and painting, 
music and sculpture. For art is the expression of 
vitality. 

Hence the need for education to cultivate the 
feeling for the beautiful, that the individual may be 
led to enrich his own life through the appreciation 
of proportion or color everywhere, and may also 
make all that he produces in some way a work of 
art. 

THE TRAINING OF EMOTION THROUGH LITERATURE 

Among the purposes for which literature is taught 
in our public schools is surely that of cultivating the 
emotions, sentiments, and esthetic feelings both for 
their own sake and for the sake of their relation to 
conduct and character. It may be disputed whether 
the emotions aroused by reading or in listening to 
stories are the same as those which result from an 
actual experience. One reason for this question is 
the fact that our emotions in reading usually give 
us pleasure even though they are of the naturally 
painful sort. Who has not cried over Dickens and 



Feeling and Education 105 

yet revelled in the reading? One follows with 
delighted horror "The Fall of the House of Usher," 
or with fervent zest the bloody adventures of some 
pirate brigand. Such is not the case, however, when 
we know the story to be true or even partly true as 
in "The Jungle," or some contemporaneous account 
of misery. If we read then it is in spite of pain for 
the sake of some ulterior interest, or else because 
we have acquired a morbid love of the melodramatic. 
This last is not only a possible but a probable effect 
of certain kinds of reading which are offered in abun- 
dance to school children in the form of dime novels — 
and some dollar and a quarter novels — and most 
conspicuously in the form of the daily paper. It is 
important therefore to know just what literature 
does accomplish for character. 

The problem is complex. It involves (1) the rela- 
tion of mental states aroused by reading to those 
aroused by actual situations; (2) the relation of 
mental states to action; (3) the relation of emotion 
to the functioning of mental states. 

The relation of the mental states of reading or 
story- telling to those of actual situations is the same 
in general as that of images to sensations. Many of 
the same neurones are involved in images as in sen- 
sations, but without the activity of certain others 
which add the color of temporal or spatial relation, 
or the feeling of reality, with its appropriate motor 
connections. The whole situation of sitting-down- 
and-reading, or sitting-back-and-listening, no doubt 
carries with it a total inhibitory influence such as is 



106 Worship in the Sunday School 

found in sleep. The connections which are made 
are with ideas and images and not with complete 
actions, except as actions may be already coupled 
with these ideas and images. 

But unlike the unordered experience which results 
from immediate contact with reality, the mental ex- 
perience in reading possesses a certain controlled, 
experimental quality. In studying scientifically a 
bit of physical nature, care is taken to control the 
conditions in such a way as to isolate the phenome- 
non from distracting relations in order that its typical 
qualities may be observed, and its conceptual value 
be realized. So art in literature presents a type by 
selecting certain universal traits for emphasis, or an 
ideal by recombining in concrete form the essential 
vital qualities of character, unstained by the mun- 
dane details which are a part of actual experience. 1 
Literature therefore has the advantage of scientific 
method coupled with human material. Consequently 
the mental states of reading acquire unity, propor- 
tion, focalization, invaluable in the acquisition of 
moral ideals. 

In the second place, any mental state may precede 
a given action, serving as its cue by association with 
it. As has been just stated, the mental state, by 
which I mean images, feelings, ideas, lacks certain 
of the nervous connections of a sensory experience 
and therefore must be connected up with the motor 
cells by actual association. Recombinations of the 
elements of mental states which have been already 

1. Cf. Woodberry, G. E., Heart of Man, "A New Defense of Poetry." 



Feeling and Education 107 

joined with acts can occur in advance of acts, in the 
form of plans and resolutions, and these actually 
work by getting into the mind, by association, a 
mental state which will touch off the desired act. 
If our response therefore to any situation is to be 
changed, we may have, first, a momentary inhibition 
of any action, second, a recall of the kind of action 
resolved upon, and third, the control of the mental 
state which has that action as its inevitable sequel. 
This is a temporary condition and the habitually 
correct response is the desideratum; but it can come 
only through many actual experiences of this con- 
sciously controlled type. 

Third, as to emotion. Emotion of some kind is 
usually included in our response to any critical sit- 
uation. It belongs in that fringe of immediate ex- 
perience which assists the feeling of reality and the 
certainty of motor connection. Without emotion to 
intensify the experience and to add its own nervous 
connections, response might not take place at all. 
The character of the response not only determines 
the emotion but is determined by it, because the 
kind and degree of emotion dictates the presence or 
absence of poise, clear thinking, self-control. Once 
started, the emotional response of fear or anger may 
take possession of the field and crowd out all possi- 
bility of ideal control. It is vital, therefore, to get 
the right emotional response started, in any situation. 
But how is this to be done through literature or 
story-telling? Not at all if not through the asso- 
ciation of this emotional response with mental states, 



108 Worship in the Sunday School 

and of mental states of certain emotional color with 
definite acts. 

It was remarked a moment ago that emotion 
helped the feeling of reality. Consequently if a 
mental state is given an emotional setting or aspect, 
it will also make more connections with conative 
groups of cells and be more likely to function as a cue 
to action if at any time recalled. If in reading about 
some disease the feeling of disgust or horror is asso- 
ciated with the consequence of certain careless acts, 
then the situation normally calling for those acts 
will arouse the idea of the consequences, the feeling 
of horror and disgust, and the act will be inhibited. 
This is comparatively simple. It is not so easy in 
the case of emotions of less dynamic quality, or in 
the case of those derived interests called sentiments. 
But the principle is the same. Surround the ideal 
response desired, for example, with all the glamour 
of youthful interest in the heroic by stirring up these 
feelings in connection with the performance of some 
similar act by an admired literary character. Then 
by imitation and by suggestion and by actual neural 
connections the response is more likely to come than 
without such reading. Of course the absolutely sure 
way to get the right response is to make it, and this 
is a part of the educational task, difficult as it may 
seem. Indeed, one of the dangers hinted at already 
is that the study of literature will be simply emo- 
tional dissipation, resulting in no change of reaction 
because lacking connection with actual experience, 
— a type of character made immortal by William 



Feeling and Education 109 

James. The cure is action, action supported and 
made desirable by cooperation of class and teacher, 
by social approval, by suggestion and imitation. 

This leads to another aspect of the method. Not 
only must the emotional reaction be associated with 
imaginary cases and be started by the force of its 
connection with experience, but it must, when actu- 
ally attained as a variation in the individual's activ- 
ity, be fixed or made secure by the satisfaction 
claimed for it. To be generous may cause a selfish 
boy so much pain that one act will forever dissuade 
him from trying it again, unless the generous response 
can be made to possess the extrinsic satisfaction of 
reward or social approval, and the ungenerous, the 
penalty of social scorn, until the natural tendency 
to kindly acts and attitudes can be substituted for 
its opposite in an established habit of goodwill. 
Here too literature helps by examples of loyalty to 
ideals when social support is lacking. It provides 
thus a sort of spiritual approval which leads in the 
direction of moral autonomy. 

But the reality of the need for connecting the idea- 
tional with the motor areas, of immediately associa- 
ting in experience ideas, feelings and acts, must never 
be lost sight of, in school or out, as a necessary con- 
dition of efficiency and fixity of character. 



CHAPTER VI 
THE PLACE OF FEELING IN WORSHIP 

The "Religious Feeling" 

Should it be true that the heart of religion is in 
a specific emotion or sentiment, then it behooves us 
to try to cultivate that emotion or its corresponding 
mood. James rather opposes the view that such a 
peculiarly religious feeling exists: 

"In the psychologies and philosophies of religion, we find the 
authors attempting to specify just what entity it (the 'religious 
sentiment') is. One man allies it to the feeling of dependence; 
one makes it a derivative of fear; others connect it with the 
sexual life; others still identify it with the feeling of the infinite; 
and so on. Such different ways of conceiving it ought of them- 
selves to arouse doubt as to whether it possibly can be one specific 
thing; and the moment we are willing to treat the term 'religious 
sentiment' as a collective name for the many sentiments which 
religious objects may arouse in alternation, we see that it proba- 
bly contains nothing whatever of a psychologically specific 
nature. There is religious fear, religious love, religious awe, 
religious joy, and so forth. But religious love is only man's 
natural emotion of love directed to a religious object; religious 
fear is only the ordinary fear of commerce, so to speak, the com- 
mon quaking of the human breast, in so far as the notion of 
divine retribution may arouse it; religious awe is the same 
organic thrill which we feel in a forest at twilight, or in a mountain 
gorge; only this time it comes over us at the thought of our 
supernatural relations; and similarly of all the various senti- 
ments which may be called into play in the lives of religious 
persons. As concrete states of mind, made up of feeling plus a 
110 



Feeling and Worship 111 

specific sort of object, religious emotions of course are psychic 
entities distinguishable from other concrete emotions; but there 
is no ground for assuming a simple abstract 'religious emotion' 
to exist as a distinct elementary mental affection by itself, present 
in every religious experience without exception." 1 

Yet even so, he inclines to the belief that in the 
religious experience a characteristic emotional change 
takes place. For example, on page 508 of the same 
book, he sums up the two universal stages of the 
religious experience as, first, an uneasiness, and 
second, its solution. "1. The uneasiness, reduced to 
its simplest terms, is a sense that there is something 
wrong about us as we naturally stand. 2. The solu- 
tion is a sense that we are saved from the wrong- 
ness by making proper connection with the higher 
powers." Here is the condition of an emotional 
excitement: inability of the individual to adjust 
himself, accompanying confusion, with consequent 
relief from a new adjustment. 

Colvin 2 regards this failure to adjust in the pres- 
ence of the universe and its uncertainties as the 
condition of a specific religious emotion. When the 
object of the failure to react adequately is that total 
something called the universe, over against which 
man feels his helplessness, with fear and doubt, the 
religious response is to give up and to throw oneself 

1. James, Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 27. Cf. also Leuba, J. H., 
A Psychological Study of Religion, p. 9; "With regard to the emotions, it 
will be sufficient to remark here that neither fear, which was the dominant 
emotion in perhaps all 'primitive religions,' nor the tender emotions, which 
have gradually displaced fear, nor yet awe, reverence, nor any other nameable 
emotion belongs exclusively to the religious life." 

2. Colvin, an unpublished lecture on Emotion. Cf . also Human Behavior 
by the same author. 



112 Worship in the Sunday School 

on the mercy of the Power. The state of upheaval 
which accompanies the sense of dependence is the 
emotional aspect of the religious experience. This 
is followed by relief and calm and so on. This 
emotional experience of dependence and surrender 
is necessary, he says, to the continuance of religion 
as a type of adjustment. As explanations of the 
world are advanced, the sphere of religious reaction 
is narrowed. But something is always left over 
which is not explained. Religion is the means of 
completing the adjustment that scientific knowledge 
fails to achieve. Faith is the religious mood which 
results from giving up to the Power that controls the 
universe. But it needs revitalizing now and then 
by an experience of religious emotion. 

But what is the relation of such an emotional 
experience to the developing religious consciousness? 
Primitive man was probably intensely emotional. 1 
He frequently found himself in situations which he 
could not adequately handle. He felt himself con- 
fronted by the mysterious Unknown in accidents, in 
storms, in drought. All the confusion and upheaval 
found in any intense emotion he no doubt experi- 
enced; but it was not until he had conceived of an 
over-ruling Power that he could have reacted by 
submitting to the mercy of such a power. The 
religious quality of the emotion was conferred by the 
conception of the nature of the situation within which 
the emotion arose, and by the nature of the adjust- 
ment finally made. In anger, for example, it is the 

1. Cf. Menzies, History of Religion, pp. 20-21; also cf. Franz Boas, 
The Mind of Primitive Man, Chap. IV. 



Feeling and Worship 113 

personal affront and the resulting desire to injure or 
annihilate, together with the whole muscular reac- 
tion, which give character to the emotion. So the 
emotional response due to the failure to meet the 
conditions of life in the universe becomes religious 
in Colvin's sense, when the universe is conceived as 
something that can be submitted to, and which, 
when submission is given, will make the desired 
adjustment possible. 

If this is essential to religion, then religion must 
grow less and less prominent all the time. As one 
reason for this Colvin suggests that science is gradu- 
ally making possible our adjustments to conditions 
without reference to the Power. A more tenable 
reason is that the idea of the character of the Power 
is becoming socialized. That is, religion is concern- 
ing itself with ever new and higher objects. When 
the Power is completely socialized, as it is in the 
Christian ideal, then such a reaction as Colvin de- 
scribes would be impossible. There is nothing spe- 
cifically Christian about an emotional experience 
based on a sense of absolute dependence. Reverence 
must be freed from primitive unsocial elements if it 
is to appear as a Christian attitude. 

If there were an emotion definitely associated with 
our sense of interdependence and social sharing and 
fellowship with both God and men — an emotion 
peculiar to our effort to win the highest conceivable 
values — then that would be a Christian as well as a 
religious emotion. That the emotional upheaval 
characteristic of more primitive religion is not Chris- 

8 



114 Worship in the Sunday School 

tian does not necessarily imply that Christianity is 
not religion. There is something more permanent 
about the religious consciousness than this emotion 
of dependence, and that is the underlying demand 
for more complete and satisfactory life. The reli- 
gious attitude is not bound up with any emotion. 
In insisting on the possession of all things needful 
for such a life, the religious state of mind may be 
subjected to various emotions, according to the 
character of the objects desired and the means of 
attaining them. For the more primitive conscious- 
ness, where God is unsocialized, the emotional up- 
heaval in the presence of the mysterious Unknown is 
a natural religious reaction. For one who regards 
God as a friend, however, the emotions character- 
istic of our friendly relations are those which are 
needed to keep alive the religious attitude of faith 
in the attainment and conservation of the highest 
values. 

We need not claim for religious experience any 
peculiar feeling, even though we continue to assert 
that religion is essentially a matter of feeling and 
attitude. We would have to discover, however, 
what feeling attitudes are characteristic of religious 
experience, especially in its Christian form. These 
we have already found to be conveniently grouped 
under the rubrics Gratitude, Goodwill, Reverence, 
Faith, and Loyalty. If we can properly define the 
social relations within which these attitudes should 
be present, and understand the purposes which 
underlie such relations, we have gone a long way 
toward defining religion. 



Feeling and Worship 115 

It is the position of this discussion, therefore, that 
the Christian religion has no emotion or feeling which 
is peculiar to it, but that the attitudes common to 
our human life become Christian when they are 
taken up into the Christian purpose. 

The Significance of the Feelings in Worship 

Psychological Problems 

We have thus found that no one feeling is confined 
to religious experience, but that religious experience 
is nevertheless vitally related to the feeling-aspect 
of consciousness. It will naturally be asked, then, 
what significance Feeling has for that aspect of reli- 
gious experience called Worship, with which we are 
now particularly concerned. We will first take up 
various problems arising from the application of the 
psychology of feeling to the purposes and methods of 
worship, and then we will turn our attention to the 
relation of the feeling-side of worship to experience 
as a whole. 

Public worship takes many forms, from the extreme 
Quaker meeting on one side to an elaborate High 
Church ritual on the other. It would be an inter- 
esting study to compare their psychological effects. 
In the absence of such material let us consider what 
goes on in a service more typical of many churches 
which stand midway between these extremes . When 
such a service is well organized, the minister has a 
definite purpose and a definite plan. He wishes to 
bring the congregation to a new point of view or to 



116 Worship in the Sunday School 

a new resolve. To this end he selects music, hymns, 
prayers, Scripture, and address, and weaves all into a 
harmonious whole which shall, in its total effect, 
induce the desired change in the minds of the audi- 
ence. And consciously or unconsciously, he makes 
use of the psychology of feeling and emotion. 

The power of music to give varying emotional 
tone to the mental state is well known. 1 We are 
familiar with music that saddens and music that 
brightens our outlook, and which, by this direct 
control of mood, indirectly controls the ideas usually 
associated with the mood. The possibility of in- 
creasing the effect by joining poetry with music is 
likewise seen, for poetry, with its rhythm, its sug- 
gestive imagery, seems also to have a control over 
mood which prosaic language does not. The 
congregational singing, further, unites all by the 
consciousness of uttering a common sentiment. 
There is an exaltation of mood from merely sharing 
an idea with others. Probably everyone has felt 
this even in conversation. Again the Scripture re- 
sponses afford an opportunity for the social expres- 
sion of ideas associated with the deepest feelings, 
both grave and happy. The sermon is intended to 
bring the central idea of the service to a focus, utiliz- 
ing the mood created by the preceding portion of the 
service and carrying the audience on to a clear con- 
ception or a clear resolution. And finally, the closing 
parts of the worship, in the singing or in the private 
devotion of silent prayer, give the congregation a 

1. Britan, H. H., "The Power of Music," Journ. Philos. Psych. Sci. 
Meth. July 18, 1908. 



Feeling and Worship 117 

means of expressing or of reflecting upon the atti- 
tudes they have reached. But most important of 
all is the effort made to bring the ideas into relation 
with the highest and most dynamic ideals of life, and 
to make the members of the congregation feel their 
association with one another and with the Father 
in Christian fellowship or in the Christian cause. 

Other elements enter in to help the general purpose. 
The offering may be made distinctly useful from a 
psychological point of view as a means of tangibly 
expressing and so renewing an altruistic attitude. 
The special music of choir or organ may stir the 
feelings. Prayer and Scripture may touch tender 
chords and offer ideas which minister to the peace 
of the distressed, and renew the ambition of the 
indifferent, or prick the conscience of the conven- 
tionally moral. 

Of course few services are so carefully planned as 
to get all the effects that could be wished for. But 
any service has some of the elements and conditions 
described, and is in a way to produce some of the 
desired effects. The best study of such effects is 
found in Hylan's "Public Worship." The inade- 
quacy of his questionaire method has already been 
commented on. But there is sufficient evidence to 
show that the persons questioned did experience 
emotional uplift and moral stimulation. It is per- 
haps not too much to assert that it is because of such 
revitalizing effect that some persons attend public 
worship, and that it is because they do not experience 
such an effect that the others stay away. 



118 Worship in the Sunday School 

A study, therefore, of the problems and methods 
involved in the control of the desired effects is 
essential to an intelligent use of public worship. 
Our discussion will confine itself to such of these 
problems and methods as impinge upon the psy- 
chology of feeling. 

One of the effects actually experienced or to be 
desired in public worship is the illumination of some 
central idea in such a way as to bring the individual 
to a feeling of conviction regarding its truth or value. 
To this end all hindrances to the free and easy flow 
of ideas about the main idea should be removed. 
Outside attractions must be banished. The mind 
must be attentive to the service and not to personal 
vexations. Hence the value of beautiful church 
interiors with restful decoration and satisfying 
appeal. The service should, further, develop a gen- 
eral feeling of joyous freedom. There is thus gained 
a narrowing of attention to one idea or group of 
ideas of which the characteristic emotional tone is 
joy. 1 These two facts, narrowing of attention and 
joyous mood, conspire to accumulate more and more 
of satisfaction through the increasing ease of nerve 
connections and a tendency to escape critical thought. 
This is all of great service in gaining the desired feel- 
ing of conviction. 

1. It was seen in the preceding chapter that satisfaction depends on the 
unhindered activity of the nervous system. As a rule, greater satisfaction 
attends the motor connections than the ideational. This is perhaps due to 
the fact that motor connections are not subject to as many inhibitions as 
are the ideational. When once started, a motor circuit will usually con- 
tinue to its completion unless external circumstances prevent it. An 
approximation to the same conditions in the neurone activity concerned 
in the association of ideas leads also to satisfaction, in an intensity directly 
proportional to the absence of inhibition. 



Feeling and Worship 119 

But it is not desirable that the process should be 
wholly a matter of suggestion, for that would be a 
reversion to the primitive "crowd" type of emotional 
control. All moral resolves should be reached 
through critical thinking. But critical thinking 
involves inhibitions. It is therefore a problem of the 
service to give sufficient freedom to the individual 
in the choice of his purposes and yet to preserve the 
high tone of feeling necessary for the sense of con- 
viction. It is this problem which distinguishes the 
experience of public worship from that of historical 
mysticism, although in both types of experience a 
sense of conviction and real personal power are 
reached. 

In the mystic experience in its extreme form there 
is a sense of immediacy, or of the possession of the 
seat of consciousness by another personality. The 
self is felt to be metaphysically united with some 
other. These phenomena are allied with ordinary 
motor automatisms, such as strumming with the 
fingers, which take place with no apparant cogni- 
zance by the main stream of thought, while the atten- 
tion is given to something else. That some fraction 
of attention, some fringe of consciousness is devoted 
to these acts, however, is evidenced by the fact that 
they can usually be recalled if sufficiently ingenious 
methods are used. 1 In the case of mysticism this 
fringe seems to encroach upon and displace the nor- 
mally brilliant nucleus of attention and to occupy 
the whole field. But that some portion of the main 

1. Cf. Morton Prince, The Dissociation of a Personality. 



120 Worship in the Sunday School 

stream still flows is seen in the fact that the automa- 
tisms are actually felt as incursions into the person- 
ality from the outside. Now there is nothing to 
prevent automatisms from occurring in the sensory 
and ideational cells as well as in the motor. The 
fringe may represent activity of an ideational as well 
as of a conative sort, and immediacy will take the 
form of the control of ideas and become mystic 
illumination. 

However new these ideas may seem, they consist 
of data already present in the mind, as is shown in 
the case of St. Catharine of Genoa, whose experiences 
are described in detail by von Hugel. 1 He analyzes 
the sources of her conceptions. James also indicates 
the same thing. 2 Dionysius, for example, describes 
truths by negatives. That is, the concepts were 
already given. Nor do the prefixes super- and omni- 
imply any new knowledge. 

But that these immediate illuminations should 
appear as possessions and revelations is perfectly 
in accord with the nature of feeling. For see what is 
going on. The mind is in the unusual process of 
uncritical activity. Ideas follow one another with 
rare ease and satisfaction. Intoxicated by its free- 
dom, the mind is raised to a new level of associative 
power. Unrestrained by critical analysis, ideas 
flock together in new and sometimes strange com- 
binations, which are attended by even greater pleas- 
ure than accompanies the successful issue of a 

1. von Hugel, The Mystical Element of Religion, Vol. I, pp. 258-260, 
Vol. II, Chap. X. 

2. Varieties of Religious Experience, Chap. XVI, p. 416. 



Feeling and Worship 121 

process of reasoning. Its deliverances seem there- 
fore to be from a source without itself and to be pro- 
foundly true. 

Conviction is so often made the test of truth that 
many falsehoods, the truth of which we are con- 
vinced of, can never be rectified. The reason for 
the association of feeling with truth is perhaps this. 
In practical life we often become convinced of the 
truth of a statement through our activity. Activity 
is more directly associated with emotion than thought 
is. Emotion and conviction therefore tend to go 
together. Further, pleasure or pain is normally 
connected intimately with activity, and pleasant 
feeling with successful activity. Since successful 
activity is a practical test of truth and a basis of 
conviction, the presence of feeling of satisfying tone 
in connection with any idea becomes naturally, 
also, a guarantee of its truth. 

Thus in the mystic experience illumination and 
conviction are attained without critical thinking. 
It is one of the tasks of public worship to develop 
the same conviction by a process of critical reflection, 
and so, to preserve the conscious freedom of the indi- 
vidual. 

When the purpose of a service is to clear up a 
theological or ethical concept, the problem is not 
difficult. The leader and the forms of worship supply 
most of the associations used in reaching the new 
idea. The process does not involve, usually, a fierce 
struggle of ideas, and it is only necessary to preserve 
a general tone of good feeling through the service. 



122 Worship in the Sunday School 

When the purpose is to revive the force of ideas 
already understood and to associate old attitudes 
with fresh resolves, the appeal is more to feeling 
than to intellect, and the emotional stimulation has 
the full assent of the congregation. This is the usual 
task of the service. It must surround the attitude 
already acceded to with all the dynamic possible. 
This implies the association of the attitude with all 
the most powerful ideals and motives, and the raising 
of the whole individual purpose to the level of the 
divine purpose. 

When the intention of the service is to change com- 
pletely the attitude of the individual and develop 
altogether new purposes, then excessive appeal to 
feeling can be used, but only with danger to individ- 
ual freedom. As a conscious educational means, 
it may be justified in revivals, for the purpose of 
getting adults out of old habits and started in the 
right direction. The constructive educational proc- 
ess must then follow the momentary control by 
suggestion. If the educational process precedes, then 
the use of suggestion in the extreme form of the 
evangelistic meeting may not be necessary. 

Now there are always some individuals who find 
reality in the mystic experience; who through an 
experience interpreted as immediate union with God, 
achieve real efficiency of character. Others will 
find help through a conscious identification of will 
with the Father's will, and reach efficiency through 
self-conscious control. The ordinary service proba- 
bly ministers to each of these two types of mind, 



Feeling and Worship 123 

and permits the individual to attain his own freedom 
by either road. 

It is in line with the mystical method of external 
control that the mystics should find through extreme 
emotional upheaval a means of winning reorganiza- 
tion and stability of character. Such upheaval has 
about it the flavor of an immediate experience, 
unconnected with the past. Indeed one significance 
of it is its power to free the individual from bondage 
to the past habits which tend to control his action. 
Delacroix 1 brings out the fact that as a result of 
mystic experiences of high emotional intensity cer- 
tain of the Great Mystics, for example, St. Theresa, 
have succeeded in gaining a practical efficiency and 
mental balance not previously possessed. The 
discussion of emotion in the preceding chapter will 
already have suggested how this may have been made 
possible. The emotional experience itself, as is seen 
from the diaries of the mystics, is one in which there 
is great confusion, and often depression, from a con- 
scious lack of adjustment. As soon, however, as 
the subject gives up and trusts himself to the Higher 
Power, the adjustment is made, the tension is broken. 
Sometimes the pendulum swings over to an expan- 
sive joyous state which is so intense as to be painful, 
and the mystic is at a loss to express his joy. This 
too is an emotional experience, and it finally gives 
way, as the consciousness of adjustment to the 
Power is clarified, to a mood of high exaltation and 
practical power. A new level of mental organiza- 

1. iStude d'Histoire et Psychologie du Mysticisme. 



124 Worship in the Sunday School 

tion is apparently reached on a plan provided by the 
ideals and ideas previously present in some form, or 
worked out during the less emotional periods. 

But it does not follow from this, that this is a 
method to be adopted in public worship. The place 
of intense emotional experience in public worship 
was touched on in speaking of revival services. It 
is desirable to produce at least enough emotional 
glow to restore valuable expansive moods, or atti- 
tudes of social significance such as the five Christian 
attitudes discussed in Chapter IV. If necessary, 
the emotion could be carried to the point of upheaval 
in order that an altogether new habit or new idea 
might be inserted, but this is rather a method for 
adults. A properly elastic education should make 
it rarely, if ever, necessary in a group of children. 

Philosophical Problems 

So far we have been chiefly concerned with 
method. There is still the problem of the content 
of the experience of worship and its relation to our 
other experience. We should be better satisfied 
if we could find out the bearing of this experience 
of worship upon our knowledge of God and of the 
process of reality; if we could know what contri- 
bution the Heart may make to our grasp upon 
reality. It will perhaps have already been suggested 
that these questions are intimately bound up with 
the philosophy of value. 

There are two ways of approach to a philosophy 
of value. The first is rational and the second prag- 



Feeling and Worship 125 

matic. One test of truth is that the asserted fact 
or law should be consistent with experience as 
already organized. A second is that it should 
agree with the controlled experience to follow: 
That is, it should be subject to objective test; and 
the apparent exceptions have to be brought within 
the law or classification. One basis for the selec- 
tion of this or that hypothesis is certainly that it 
satisfies our intellectual demand for consistency. 
The dynamic is the feeling of satisfaction in the 
congruity of new and old. Now in the experience 
of worship the mind may be exalted to a high pitch 
of clarity and efficiency of association, for the reasons 
given early in the chapter, so that experience is 
viewed in greater completeness and with more 
perfect perspective. The selection, then, from the 
many incoming ideas, is made on the basis of a fuller 
grasp of experience and is attended with a higher 
degree of feeling, so that the products of such mental 
processes may seem to have the force of necessary 
truths and to need no further corroboration. They 
are obvious. And indeed, the point is that they 
really may be true, and that the nature of reality 
may be comprehended, thus, far in advance of the 
plodding experience of empirical investigation, 
necessary as that may be. This has proved to be 
the case in the invention of genius, in the insight of 
mathematicians, in the far-reaching prognostica- 
tion of captains of industry. 1 The correctness 
of the vision is proportional to experience, to fertil- 

1. Cf. Th. Ribot, Essay on the Creative Imagination, especially Chaps. 
II, III and IV of Part I. 



126 Worship in the Sunday School 

ity of mind, and to the, as yet, unanalyzed faculty 
of sagacity in the selection of the factor which cor- 
responds most accurately to the process of reality 
and the flow of events. Value belongs intimately 
with this whole process of thought, for it is the 
feeling of value, or of compatibility with present 
intellectual needs, which is at the basis of all this 
kind of thinking. And the value is thus seen to be 
one source or test of truth. 

The other way of approach is that which empha- 
sizes the modifiability of reality, or the possibility 
of modification in the direction of value. Mind 
is one very important factor in the determination 
of the process of reality. Men change their environ- 
ment and the nature and forms of reality to suit 
their wants. The assertion, therefore, of this or 
that value as a necessary correlate of some need, 
is a first step toward its attainment, toward its 
creation. The thing asserted becomes true, and 
the thing demanded becomes real, through the 
activity of men. Here, then, is another basis for 
claiming validity for judgments of value. It is 
only by making value- judgments that we get truth; 
and that portion of truth, that section of reality 
of which we do become cognizant, is likely to be 
just that which is marked off for us by our bold as- 
sumption that what must be, that what we are 
fundamentally in need of to complete our intel- 
lectual or our physical being, must exist or must 
be made to exist. 

In Bergson's books reality is thought of as a proc- 



Feeling and Worship 127 

ess, discoverable through and in activity, since 
activity, being itself a process, is of the same sub- 
stance with it. It has been suggested how closely 
feeling and activity are bound up together; how 
feeling is the registering in consciousness of the 
successful or unsuccessful direction of activity; 
how it guides our unconscious adjustments; and 
how, by its indication of the attainment of intel- 
lectual harmony, it may be thought of as funda- 
mental to all mental activity whatsoever. A part 
of our conscious appropriation of reality, a part 
of the process by which our experience of reality 
takes place, is through feeling as attitude, as the 
conscious correlate of activity. Reality becomes 
known to us, not only through the analyzed results 
of activity, but in the activity itself; and the con- 
scious side of the actual process of doing something 
is Feeling. 

That feeling brings us no new concepts does not 
necessarily mean that it teaches us nothing. That 
it clothes the old concepts with new meaning be- 
cause of its correlation with the process of life- 
adjustment, and that it thrills them with the dyna- 
mic of full conviction, turning thought into action, 
and opinion into triumphant faith — these are no 
small contributions to human life. To have found 
the way through the need of an expanding life to 
the assertion of the reality of such a life is more 
the fruit of feeling than of intellect. Had not a 
greater need been felt than the need for consistency — 
or had not the need for a larger and more inclusive 



128 Worship in the Sunday School 

consistency come, which would include a possible 
as well as a past experience — then no one would 
have rebelled against the doctrine of a fixed, un- 
changing and unchangeable universe, proclaiming 
instead a growing, progressing, achieving universe. 
The idea was not new. The centralization of it, 
the absorption of it into the fiber of all modern think- 
ing, is new. It is the feeling for the beautiful that 
makes of pigments and canvas a new creation in 
art. It is the feeling for the good that turns the 
scholar into a saint. It is the feeling for the true 
that transforms the philosopher into a prophet. 1 

Perhaps we are sometimes prone to overwork 
the rubrics ethical and social, and in our endeavor 
to rid ourselves of flaccid quietism, to throw out the 
child with the bath. There are two types of charac- 
ter, the reflective and the impulsive. The one 
tends to overvalue contemplation and the other, 
action, as the sum and substance of existence. It 
is a matter of emphasis. We both act to enjoy 
the subsequent or attendant satisfaction, and we 
reflect that we may better act. But it is unneces- 
sary to say that either one or the other aspect of 
experience is the final end of existence. It would 
be more truthful to say that satisfaction is the end 
of all living, for that is, in a way, a middle term be- 

1. Although the claim stands that there is a difference between knowledge 
and faith, and that, however sure the prophet may be of the truth of his 
vision, his contribution to man's grasp on reality must not be confused 
with the demonstrations of science ; yet it must be as strongly asserted that 
"pure" science is empty without faith, that all its super-structure is built 
on bold assumptions, that it looks backward instead of forward, and that 
so far as it does try to claim that what has been must be, or that what has 
been shall be superseded, it has adopted axioms of faith. When science 
involves a purpose it becomes a means to the ends set by faith. 



Feeling and Worship 129 

tween thought and action, representing both. It 
is more definitely the sphere of self-hood than any 
other process or state of mind (if we take it to in- 
clude what we mean by attitude). As satisfaction 
becomes differentiated, objectified, and remembered 
or anticipated, it is made articulate as value. The 
intellect and the will become the tools of desire 
in the localization and attainment of value. This 
value becomes in the course of history more and 
more social and ethical. The individualistic values 
get sifted out and the universal values become the 
greatest satisfiers. But this does not mean that the 
basis of value ceases to be in large part subjective. 
Its foundation is still in the personal attitude and 
personal satisfaction. The inner experience of 
feeling and reflection that accompanies and results 
from action is bound to remain on an equality with 
action itself as the goal of life and the test of truth. 
The whole circuit of experience is often summed up 
in the word "action." But considering the unity 
of feeling and action, might not the inclusive word 
as well be "feeling"? 

In seeking what feeling may have to say about 
God we come again upon the claims of the mystics. 
There are two kinds of God-experience, immanence 
and transcendence. Physical and biological science 
are fast approaching a degree of organization and 
completeness which makes the inference of imma- 
nence inevitable. The evidence of a unifying principle 
of a universe of order, which includes ourselves, 
has led us to believe in the presence of an intelli- 



130 Worship in the Sunday School 

gence in the world and to feel our oneness with the 
process of physical nature. In like manner, biology 
is coming to reiterate more strongly than ever the 
"pragmatic substitute for free will," the complete 
interdependence of men, physiologically and socially. 
Equipped with the physique and capacities given 
us by our progenitors, we develop in accordance 
with our possibilities in the direction indicated by 
our environment, which also is given. What have 
we that we have not received? Individualism has 
given way to a philosophy of social solidarity com- 
parable to the mystic's loss of the sense of self in a 
larger whole. The difference is that the one type 
comes by a rational process to an experience of the 
loss of self in the oneness of Humanity, in which he 
finds an immanent God; whereas the mystic be- 
lieves in the unmediated, unconnected and there- 
fore un-rational experience of the loss of self through 
unification with a transcendent God. 

The experience of personal communion with a 
transcendent God is not verifiable in sensory experi- 
ence, because it does not arise from it. But the 
senses do not furnish us with all the experience we 
have. The mystic claims an inner experience, 
just as real and complete as that of hearing and 
sight, in which he asserts that he has met God and 
has had direct evidence of his existence and char- 
acter. He says that others may come and see. He 
makes no sterner demands than does the scientist 
who offers his truth to be tested by the world. 
None but a trained specialist can fulfil the condi- 



Feeling and Worship 131 

tions for getting similar sensory impressions through 
eye and ear. Yet that does not discredit the pro- 
nouncements of science. The mystic experience, 
too, can come only under certain conditions and with 
long discipline, but neither is that a basis for dis- 
crediting its deliverances. The mystic specialists 
hold strictly to experience and throw open their 
treasury of truth for examination by any, and for 
verification by those who, if they have the ability, 
will subject themselves to the same kind of experi- 
ence. 

Yet even if we should be inclined to grant all 
this, it is still true that the mystic experience must 
and can be interpreted, at least as to its psychological 
process, in terms of empirical science, and that the 
values of the mystic experience must and can be 
sifted and weighed and freed from their suffocation 
in an antiquated supernaturalism. Feeling is the 
realm of immediate experience in the sense that 
it is the direct and intimate accompaniment of all 
mental processes. But it remains a question whether 
or not, through this immediate conscious grasp on 
certain real processes, we attain to insight into the 
total significance of life and its relation to a larger, 
more comprehensive consciousness, to a degree not 
possible through inference from the isolated facts 
of experience. 

Now the value of mysticism does not consist of the 
mystic philosophy and its utterances about God, 
nor of the interpretation that the mystic gives to 
his mental processes. Rather does it lie for us in 



132 Worship in the Sunday School 

the emphasis of the mystic on feeling and reflection 
as aids to the higher organization of character. 
The mystic is really concerned with values, and with 
the assertion of the need of the reality of certain 
values for the attainment of self-realization. 

In public worship the values of the mystic experi- 
ence can be gained without its detrimental aspects. 
Public worship may be conducted so as to provide 
opportunity for reflection and for the attainment of 
conviction concerning the great themes of conduct 
and reality. These ideas are brought into relation 
with one another and organized about the central 
Christian purpose. They are shared by the rest 
of the group and therefore, either consciously or 
unconsciously, become part of a social program. 
In worship there is also a social relation, consisting 
of the fellowship of moral agents who are felt to 
be necessary to one another for the accomplishment 
of their common purpose. And this fellowship 
includes God, as necessary for the working out of 
one's deepest hopes, and as essential to the ultimate 
satisfaction of the desire for perfect companionship. 
In worship the highest values of life, including the 
value of friendship, acquire thus an eternal signifi- 
cance; and the attitudes and feelings of our common 
humanity are transformed into the attitudes and 
feelings of universal religion. 



CHAPTER VII 

AN EXPERIMENT IN SUNDAY-SCHOOL 
WORSHIP 

The task yet remains of showing that services 
can be planned and carried out in such a way as to 
embody the general principles discussed in Chapters 
V and VI with a view to accomplishing the ends 
set forth in Chapters I, II and IV. 

During the season of 1912-1913, the opening ser- 
vices of the Union School of Religion 1 have been 
conducted under the direction of the writer. The 
scheme was adopted of dividing the year into five 
Periods, each devoted to one of the attitudes de- 
scribed in Chapter IV. Every service was planned 
with great care, with a view, first, to leading the 
children into the attitude of the Period, and second, 
to helping them to come naturally to an under- 
standing of the meaning of the attitude and its 

1. The School, maintained by the Union Theological Seminary, "is an 
outgrowth of a movement that has been going on for some years in the City 
of New York. . . . Under the name, 'The Union School of Religion,' 
it is now a regular part of the Seminary department of Religious Education. 
The aim is to employ in religious education both modern knowledge and the 
methods of teaching that are approved by the best educational practice, 
and in so doing to train workers and to accumulate a body of experience 
that shall be of service to other Sunday schools. 

"The general supervision of the School is delegated by the Faculty to a 
Committee, consisting of Professor George A. Coe (Chairman), President 
Francis Brown, Professor Julius A. Bewer, Professor Thomas C. Hall, and 
the Reverend Gaylord S. White. With this Committee, Dean James E. 
Russell, Professor Samuel T. Dutton, and Professor Frank M. McMurry 
of Teachers College, cooperate in an advisory capacity." (Quoted from the 
descriptive circular of the School.) 

The School holds its sessions in the new Seminary buildings on Broadway 
at 120th Street. The classes meet in separate rooms in the Administration 
Building. The opening exercises are held in the Chapel. 

133 



134 Worship in the Sunday School 

relation to Christian living. This involved the se- 
lection of hymns with suitable tunes and words, 
choir responses, psalms, stories, and the writing of 
talks and prayers. Certain problems were present 
from the start, such as the following: 

1. All the classes, from the First Grade to the 
Second Year High School, met together, and the Kin- 
dergarten was often present also. This meant that 
the service had to be made to appeal to many dif- 
erent stages of intellectual and social development. 

2. The children knew only a few hymns. Con- 
sequently it was often necessary to devote part of 
the time to the practice of hymns. 

3. The hymns in general use in the churches and 
accessible in the Church or Sunday-school Hymnals 
represent for the most part the experience of adults, 
and theological interests foreign to children. This 
made necessary a careful examination of hundreds 
of hymns and a strict censorship of their qualities. 
The number of hymns from which a suitable selec- 
tion could be made was found to be very small. 

4. Stories embodying Christian attitudes in a 
form adapted to use in the pulpit are extremely 
rare. Those used were almost always re- writ ten 
or altered to meet the need of the occasion. 

5. The place of worship was at some distance from 
the class rooms, so that it was necessary to adopt 
an order of procedure to include the assembling in 
the building where the classes were held, the walk 
to the Chapel, the service, and the return to the class 
rooms. This involved processional and recessional 
singing. 

On the other hand, the purpose of the service was 
materially promoted by the following items : 



An Experiment in Worship 135 

1. The Chapel where the services were held is a 
beautiful gothic structure of semi-cathedral type, 
rather small, with a splendid organ. 

2. The teachers and choirmaster were all thor- 
oughly sympathetic with the plans and assisted gen- 
erously in carrying them out. The organist was an 
able professional musician, used to playing in child- 
ren's services. 

3. Under the efficient leadership of the principal 
and choirmaster of the preceding year, the School 
had become accustomed to the general order of 
worship followed. The season consequently began 
with an attitude of interest in the service on the part 
of the children and readiness to take part. There 
was also left over from the year before the nucleus 
of a choir of boys and girls with which the new choir- 
master could begin. 

In other words, the writer was able to start in 
with an assured asset of "goodwill" toward the 
service and of certain habits formed the preceding 
year in connection with those elements of the service 
which were continued — such as hymn singing, the 
repeating of psalms and of the Lord's Prayer. With 
these helps and hindrances the services were planned 
and conducted. A description of the general pro- 
gram follows : 

The School assembled in the administration 
building, where hats and coats were hung up. At 
9.30 the children formed in line in order of grades, 
beginning with the youngest. The choir of about 
twenty-four boys and girls, preceded by the principal 
and the chorister, then led the School through the 
corridors and cloister to the Chapel. As the door of 



136 Worship in the Sunday School 

the Chapel was reached, the organist, who had been 
playing a prelude, began the processional hymn, 
which he then played through. Then, with the 
choir singing the first stanza of the hymn, the School 
continued into the Chapel. The choir sat in the 
regular choir stalls in front. As the rest of the chil- 
dren reached their pews they joined in the singing 
of the hymn, which was continued until all had ar- 
rived in their places. The service then followed, 
with such items as these. 

Processional Hymn 

The Lord's Prayer 

The Doxology or a Psalm 

Sentence sung by the choir 

The Common Prayer 

Hymn 

Story or Talk or Organ Selection 

Prayer by the Leader 

Recessional Hymn 

All sang the first stanza of the recessional hymn and 
then the choir passed out, singing the next one or 
two stanzas alone. When the choir finished with an 
Amen, the School started out in the same order as 
it had entered, and, with the choir leading, marched 
back to the administration building to the several 
class rooms. 

The details of four typical services are here given 
in full, with suggestions as to the contents of the 
others. The first has as its central attitude Grati- 
tude, the second and third, Goodwill, and the fourth, 
Reverence. In each case the order was followed 



An Experiment in Worship 137 

without any announcement of the items, except in 
the case of the hymns. 

I GRATITUDE 

1. Peocessional Hymn, "Rejoice ye pure in heart." Tune, 

"Marion" 

Rejoice, ye pure in heart, 

Rejoice, give thanks and sing; 
Your festal banner wave on high, 
The Cross of Christ your King. 
Rejoice, rejoice, 
Rejoice, give thanks and sing. 

Bright youth and snow-crowned age, 

Strong men and maidens meek, 
Raise high your free, exulting song, 

God's wondrous praises speak. 
Refrain. 

Yes, on through life's long path, 

Still chanting as we go; 
From youth to age, by night and day, 

In gladness and in woe. 
Refrain. 

Still lift your standard high, 

Still march in firm array; 
As warriors through the darkness toil 

Till dawns the golden day. 
Refrain. 

The School remained standing as the leader said, "Let us 
pray." Then followed 

2. The Lord's Prayer, the choir singing the Amen 

Still standing the School then sang 

3. The Doxology,* Tune, " Old Hundredth." 

1. This was explained to the children by the choirmaster as expressing 
for hundreds of years the praise and gratitude of Christians. 



138 Worship in the Sunday School 

The School was then seated and bowed during 

4. The Sentence by the Choir (sung softly) 

The Lord is in His Holy temple, 

Let all the earth keep silence before Him. 

The School continued with heads bowed, and the leader 
said, "Let us pray." Then followed 

5. The Common Prayer 1 the choir singing the Amen 

O God, our Heavenly Father, Thou hast freely given us 
all things. Thou hast made the world beautiful. Thou 
dost send the sunshine and the rain, that the earth may 
yield us food and flowers. Thou hast given us the homes we 
love, and hast set us among many friends. All day long we 
are safe in Thy keeping; and at night we sleep in peace 
because of Thy gracious care. 

We thank Thee, our Father, for all these gifts of Thy 
bounty. As Thou dost love us, so may we, by loving and 
helping others, show ourselves Thy grateful children. Amen. 

The choirmaster then announced the Hymn, which the 
School sang standing: 

6. Hymn, "We plough the fields and scatter." Tune, "Dresden" 

We plough the fields and scatter 

The good seed on the land, 
But it is fed and watered 

By God's almighty hand; 
He sends the snow in winter, 

The warmth to swell the grain, 
The breezes and the sunshine, 

And soft, refreshing rain. 

He only is the Maker 

Of all things near and far; 
He paints the wayside flower, 

He lights the evening star; 

1. The children learned the prayer in class or at home and so came to the 
service prepared to repeat it in unison. 



An Experiment in Worship 139 

The winds and waves obey Him, 

By Him the birds are fed; 
Much more to us, His children, 

He gives our daily bread. 

We thank Thee, then, Father, 

For all things bright and good; 
The seed time and the harvest, 

Our life, our health, our food. 
Accept the gifts we offer 

For all Thy love imparts, 
And, what Thou most desirest, 

Our humble, thankful hearts. 

7. Story, "What Bradley Owed"* 

There was once a boy whose name was Bradley. They called 
him Tiddley Winks when he was young, because he was such a 
tiny little thing. When he was about eight years old, he had 
already got into the bad habit of thinking of everything as worth 
so much money. He wanted to know the price of everything he 
saw, and if it had not cost a great deal, it did not seem to him 
to be of any value at all. 

Now this was rather foolish of him, for there are a great many 
things that money can't buy, which don't have any price at all. 
Money cannot buy the very best things in the world, as you will 
soon see. 

One morning when Bradley came down to breakfast, he put on 
his mother's plate a little piece of paper, neatly folded. His 
mother opened it, and what do you think was on it? She could 
hardly believe it, but this is what Bradley had written : 
Mother owes Bradley 

For running errands, 15 cents 

For being good, 10 cents 

For taking music lessons, 15 cents 

Extras, 5 cents 



Total that mother owes Bradley, 55 cents 
1. Adapted from H. T. Kerr, Children's Story Sermons, 



140 Worship in the Sunday School 

His mother smiled when she read that, but she did not say 
anything. When lunch came she put the bill on Bradley's plate 
with the 55 cents. Bradley's eyes fairly danced when he saw the 
money, and he thought his business ability had been quickly 
rewarded. All at once he saw that there was another piece of 
paper beside his plate, neatly folded, just like the first one. And 
when he opened it, what do you think he saw? Why, it was a 
bill from his mother! This is the way it read: 

Bradley owes Mother 

For being good to him, nothing 
For nursing him through his long illness 

with scarlet fever, nothing 

For clothes and shoes and gloves and playthings, nothing 

For all his meals and his beautiful room, nothing 

Total that Bradley owes mother, nothing 

Now what do you think that boy did when he read those words? 
Do you think he put the 55 cents in his pocket and went off 
whistling? I am sure you know better than that. No — the 
tears came into Bradley's eyes, and he put his arms around his 
mother's neck, and he placed his hand with the 55 cents in her 
hand, and said, "Take the money all back, mother, and just let 
me love you and do things for you for nothing." 

8. Prayer, the choir singing the Amen 

O most merciful and loving Father, Thou alone knowest how 
much we owe to Thee. For what have we that we have not 
received? Our mothers give us so much more than we can ever 
count, of life, of love, and care. But Thou givest us our mothers. 
Our fathers give us their long hours of toil, that we may have 
plenty, to eat, to wear and to enjoy. But Thou givest us our 
fathers. Our teachers give us daily strength and help as we 
strive to learn about Thee and about the world that Thou hast 
made. But Thou dost give us our teachers. 

Life, with all its joys and sorrows, with all its friendships, its 
strivings and its victories, is Thy gift, O God, to us. Teach us, 



An Experiment in Worship 141 

our Father, the shame of unthankful hearts. May all that we 
possess of ease and security and friendship only make us the 
more eager to share our blessings with those who have made us 
happy, and with those, too, who have none of the good things of 
life which we enjoy. 

Hasten the time, God, when all men shall be as brothers; 
when all occasions for war and suffering shall cease; and the 
whole world shall grow into the fellowship of an eternal peace. 

In the name of the Great Teacher and Elder Brother, Jesus 
Christ. Amen. 

At the close of the prayer the choirmaster announced the 
9. Recessional Hymn, "God is my strong salvation." Tune, 
"Aurelia." 

God is my strong salvation; 

What foe have I to fear? 
In darkness and temptation 

My Light, my Help is near; 
Though hosts encamp around me, 

Firm to the fight I stand; 
What terror can confound me, 

With God at my right hand? 

Place on the Lord reliance, 

My soul, with courage wait; 
His truth be thine affiance 

When faint and desolate; 
His might thy heart shall strengthen, 

His love thy joy increase; 
Mercy thy days shall lengthen; 

The Lord will give thee peace. 

Among other hymns used during this Period are 
the following: 

"The King of Love my Shepherd is." Tune, " Dominus 

regit me" 
"For the beauty of the earth." Tune, "Dix" 



142 Worship in the Sunday School 

"Come, ye thankful people, come." Tune, "St. George's 
Windsor" 

Other stories told were: "About Angels," 1 "How 
Bread Came to the Children," 2 "The Little Blind 
Girl. " 3 On one Sunday, in place of the story, 
the organist played "The Priests' March" from 
"Athalie." 

In these services, gratitude for the everyday bless- 
ings of food, clothing, friends, fathers, mothers, and 
so on, was made prominent. The series led up to 
Thanksgiving, at which time, on the appropriate 
Sunday, a short story of the first Thanksgiving was 
told, and the Governor's Proclamation read. The 
prayers, as is illustrated in the one given, supple- 
mented the idea of gratitude to friends with that of 
gratitude to God as the source of all good. 

II GOODWILL* 

1. Processional Hymn, "We've a story to tell to the nations." 
Tune, "Message" 

We've a story to tell to the nations, 

That shall turn their hearts to the right, 

A story of truth and sweetness, 
A story of peace and light. 

Chorus : 
For the darkness shall turn to dawning, 

And the dawning to noon-day bright, 
And Christ's great Kingdom shall come on earth, 

The Kingdom of truth and light. 

1. Adapted from Laura E. Richards' story in Golden Windows. 

2. Adapted from Phila P. Bowman, in Children's Sunday Hour of Story 
and Song, by Moffat and Hidden. 

3. Adapted from Mrs. C. A. Lane, First Book of Religion. 

4. The method of conducting the service was the same as in I. 



An Experiment in Worship 143 

We've a song to be sung to the nations, 

That shall lift their hearts to the Lord, 
A song that shall conquer evil, 

And shatter the spear and sword. 
Chorus. 

2. The Lord's Prayer, standing, the Amen by the choir 

3. Psalm 100, repeated in unison by the School, standing: Make 

a joyful noise unto the Lord, all ye lands, etc. 

4. Sentence by the choir (the same as in I), the School seated 

and bowed 

5. The Common Prayer 

Our Father in Heaven, we thank Thee that in work and 
in play, in joy and in sorrow, Thou art the Friend and Com- 
panion of us all. When we do wrong and grieve Thee, Thou 
art ready to forgive. When we do right, Thou art glad. 

May no hatred nor envy dwell in our hearts. Keep our 
hands from selfish deeds and our lips from unkind words. 
Teach us to bring cheer to any who suffer, and to share freely 
with those who are in need. So may we help Thee, our 
Father, to bring Peace, Goodwill and Joy to all Thy children. 

Amen. 

6. Practice of Christmas Hymns 

"It came upon the midnight clear." Tune, "Carol" 
"The First Noel" 

7. Story, The Prodigal Son, retold from the Bible 

8. Prayer, the choir singing the Amen 

O most merciful and loving Father, when we think of Thine 
unfailing care and of Thy patient friendliness toward us, we are 
ashamed of our unfaithfulness. We know that we have given 
pain to others by thoughtless words and acts. We have been 
angry and sulky when we should have been cheerful and kind. 
We have been selfish with the things our parents have given us, 
and we have wasted things which others have provided for us. 
We are not worthy of Thy goodness. Yet how great is Thy love 
toward us, that we should be called the children of God. 



144 Worship in the Sunday School 

Forgive us, we pray Thee, and give us the desire and the 
strength to do as we know that Thou dost expect us to do. May 
we be more faithful in our duties, more loyal to those that love 
us. Help us to forgive those who do wrong, and to be friendly 
with those who dislike us and whom we dislike. May we never 
forget that they, too, are our brothers and sisters. 

We are glad, O God, for every bit of joy there is in the world, 
for every bright spot where the sun of happiness shines. Make 
us Thy torch-bearers, that we may shed about us the light of love 
and goodwill. 

And all this we ask as we remember him who is the light and 
the life of men, even our Lord, Jesus Christ. Amen. 

9. Recessional Hymn, " Joy to the World." Tune, "Antioch" 

As the Period of Goodwill centered so much in 
the interest of Christmas, most of the songs used 
were Christmas hymns and carols which were to 
be used at the Christmas Festival. Besides those 
mentioned the following were learned and sung: 

*'0 Little Town of Bethlehem." Tune, "St. Louis" 

"While Shepherds watched their flocks." Tune, "Christmas" 

"Holy Night" (StiUe Nacht). 

This was by no means a loss, however, as the pre- 
dominating spirit of this music and of the Christmas 
season itself is Goodwill. The idea was carried out 
also in one of the Christmas Services, which was as 
follows: 

III 

1. Processional Hymn, "It came upon the midnight clear" 

2. The Lord's Prayer 

3. The Doxology 

4. Sentence by the choir (the same as for II) 

5. The Common Prayer (the same as for II) 

6. Psalm 100 in unison 



An Experiment in Worship 145 

7. Song, by the Kindergarten, Martin Luther's "Cradle Song" 

8. Scripture, Luke II, 1-20 

9. Hymn, "O Little Town of Bethlehem" 

10. A Christmas Story (see below) 

11. Vocal solo, "O Holy Night," Adolphe Adam 

12. Carol, "The First Noel" 

13. Carol, by the choir, "The Midnight Mass," Robin J. Legge 

14. Hymn, "While Shepherds watched their flocks" 

15. Organ solo, from "Tannhauser" 

16. Leader's Prayer (see p. 146) 

17. Recessional Hymn, "Joy to the world" 

A CHRISTMAS STORY 

(Number 10 in Service HI) 

I am going to tell you a Christmas story this morning. It 
may not seem like a Christmas story at first, because it happened 
last October. You have all heard it, or one like it; for the 
really big part of the story is true of many people. It is about a 
man, who, all the year 'round, lived in the spirit of Christmas. 

His name was William Rugh, and his home was Gary, Indiana. 
He was born a cripple. So he never grew big and tall like other 
boys. About the only thing he could do was to sell newspapers. 
But he did that so well that he and his deaf and dumb partner 
had worked up a quite flourishing business. Everybody liked 
him. Many would go far out of their way to buy a paper of 
him, because they did not want to miss his cheery "Good Morn- 
ing" and his happy smile. In spite of his physical deformity, he 
had a pleasant word for every one. 

One day he heard that there was a girl in the hospital in Gary 
who had been so badly burned that she was not likely to live. 
The only thing that could save her life was some skin from the 
body of a living person to replace what had been destroyed. 
William Rugh was the one who offered to help. He told the 
physicians that they might have his crippled leg. Not so much 
to give, perhaps — just a useless limb. But he knew that to have 
even this withered limb removed was a grave risk to his own 
10 



146 Worship in the Sunday School 

frail life. And he gladly took the risk for the sake of some one 
he had never seen. "I want to be of use to somebody," he said. 
And he was of use. But he never recovered from the operation. 
Was he filled with regret then to feel that he had given a life when 
he intended to give only a useless limb? Not at all. Almost his 
last words were of thankfulness, that he really could have been 
of use to somebody. And the girl did not die. 

For such a deed of perfect devotion and of heroic chivalry, 
what more beautiful memorial could there be than the living 
form and the eternal gratitude of the one who was thus saved 
through his sacrifice? "Greater love hath no man than this, 
that a man lay down his life for his friend." That's what William 
Rugh did. 

Nineteen centuries ago some one else did it, and since then 
many others have followed his example. Before Jesus came, 
people did not often think it worth while to do much for others. 
In many places they would have scoffed at William Rugh. But 
when Jesus taught men what a wonderful thing it is just to give, 
just to give, without bothering about the getting, then men 
began to honor and admire those who forgot themselves in glad 
devotion to the needs of others. It is because Jesus lived, that 
thousands of men and women and children all over the world 
can unite today, not to mock, but to honor and revere and to 
love the hero of Gary. In the life of William Rugh there was 
present the spirit of him whose coming we today are celebrating; 
the spirit of him who gave himself that all men might have a 
more abundant, larger, happier, worthier life. 

And so you see, that's why I called this a Christmas story. 

A CHRISTMAS PRATER 

(Number 16 in Service III) 

Our Heavenly Father, we are glad that Christmas comes every 
year. The thought of Christmas and of all that it means fills 
us so full of good cheer and of goodwill, that we can step out into 
the new year with eagerness and confidence and a kindly feeling 
for every one. We like to have people give us things. We are 



An Experiment in Worship 147 

glad in knowing that they love us. But we are glad most of all 
that we are able to give things to our friends and to show them 
that we love them. Sometimes we cannot give much, but Thou 
hast shown us, our Father, that the greatest gift in the world is 
love. 

In the joy of Christmas, amid all the excitement and the 
glitter of gifts and candles, in our good times at home and in the 
fellowship of friends, may we not forget, O Most Merciful Father, 
those who have no Christmas. May we not forget the many, 
many boys and girls and men and women for whom Christmas 
is full of toil and hardship and sad memories — the many who 
have no money to buy gifts, no friends to buy them for, no Christ- 
mas trees, no homes, no comfort. Oh may the glow of the Christ- 
mas spirit not grow cold as we think of them, but rather may the 
warm fire of goodwill, which the joy of Christmas has kindled in 
our hearts, burn more brightly and spread abroad its warmth 
and cheer to those who are lonely and hungry and cold. 

So shall little deeds of kindness fall like snowflakes from the 
sky, and cover the earth with a garment of white; and in the 
glorious sunlight of God's love, all things shall sparkle and glitter 
and shine, with the spirit of Christmas. 

And as we offer our prayer, we think of Jesus, whom we love, 
who came as the first Christmas gift to the world, and in whose 
face we have seen the light of the knowledge of Thy glory. Amen. 

At different times during the Period other matters 
were introduced into the service, as, for example, 
the proposal to repeat a contribution made the 
year before to assist some Chinese students, or 
sending a message to these students. Opportunity 
was thus given in the service itself for the pupils 
to express their goodwill toward people outside their 
own group. 



148 Worship in the Sunday School 

IV REVERENCE* 

1. Processional Hymn," O worship the King." Tune, "Hanover" 

O worship the King all glorious above, 
O gratefully sing His power and His love; 
Our Shield and Defender, the Ancient of days, 
Pavilioned in splendor, and girded with praise. 

Thy bountiful care what tongue can recite? 

It breathes in the air; it shines in the light; 

It streams from the hills; it descends to the plain; 

And sweetly distils in the dew and the rain. 

Frail children of dust, and feeble as frail, 
In Thee do we trust, nor find Thee to fail; 
Thy mercies how tender, how firm to the end, 
Our Maker, Defender, Redeemer, and Friend! 

2. The Lord's Prayer, standing, the Amen by the choir 

3. Opening Stanza by the School. Tune, "Nicaea" 

Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty! 
Early in the morning our song shall rise to Thee; 
Holy, Holy, Holy! merciful and mighty! 
Perfect in power, in love and purity! 

4. Sentence by the choir, the School bowed. The Refrain of 
"Day is dying in the west." Tune "Chautauqua" 

Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Hosts! 
Heaven and earth are full of Thee, 
Heaven and earth are praising Thee 
O Lord, Most High! Amen. 

5. The Common Prayer 

O Thou who art the God of Power and of Love, we come 
to Thee with thankful praise and adoration. Without Thee 

1 . The method of conducting the service was the same as in I. 



An Experiment in Worship 149 

there is no life, nor any joy. Thou hast made the world in 
all its beauty. Thou hast caused he sun to give us warmth 
and light. The shining stars obey Thy will; the flowers 
also are Thy ministers. 

Teach us, O Father, true obedience to Thy perfect law. 
From all proud thoughts defend us. In our ignorance, Thy 
wisdom give us. Make us strong in Thine eternal strength. 
And thus, enfolded by Thy love, we would live in fellowship 
with Thee, God, forever. Amen. 

6. Hymn, "Light of the World." Tune, "Light of the World" 

Light of the world, we hail Thee, 

Flushing the eastern skies; 
Never shall darkness veil Thee 

Again from human eyes; 
Too long, alas ! withholden, 

Now spread from shore to shore; 
Thy light, so glad and golden, 

Shall set on earth no more. 

Light of the world, Thy beauty 

Steals into every heart, 
And glorifies with duty 

Life's poorest, humblest part; 
Thou robest in thy splendor 

The simple ways of men, 
And helpest them to render 

Light back to Thee again. 

Light of the world, before Thee 

Our spirits prostrate fall; 
We worship, we adore Thee, 

Thou Light, the Life of all; 
With Thee is no forgetting 

Of all Thine hand hath made; 
Thy rising hath no setting, 

Thy sunshine hath no shade. 



150 Worship in the Sunday School 

7. Talk on Prayer 

There was once a little girl who thought that God lived awa v 
off somewhere and didn't pay any attention to small folks. So 
one day she said to her father, "Papa, I want you to say some- 
thing to God for me. I have such a little voice I don't think He 
could hear it away up in Heaven." But her father said to her, 
"If God were surrounded by all the angels singing one of the 
most beautiful songs that was ever heard in Heaven, He would 
say to them, 'Hush! Stop singing for a little while. There's a 
little girl who wants to tell me something, and I must listen to 
what she has to say.' " l So the little girl wasn't afraid to speak 
to God herself after that. 

A long, long time ago people used to think that God would 
sometimes appear like a man and come to visit them unex- 
pectedly. We know now that He doesn't do that. He doesn't 
have to come to visit us. He is with us all the time, although we 
never see Him. Sometimes we wonder what He is like; and we 
cannot help thinking that He must be like Jesus. We remember 
what a big strong man Jesus was, and how He was always trying 
to help somebody out of a difficulty, or make somebody well, or 
tell some one how to be happy and brave in misfortune, or teach 
people how to live together as children of the Heavenly Father; 
and we think that God must be like him. God is our friend and 
He wants us to be His friends. 

Prayer is just talking with our Father. And He is not far 
away. We do not have to talk very loud for Him to hear. In- 
deed, when any one even begins to pray, God is already in his 
heart, helping him to pray. 

A little boy once went out to walk with his father. "Shall I 
take hold of your hand?" asked his father. "No," said the boy, 
"let me take hold of yours." So they started out. Pretty soon 
the little boy stumbled, and he let go of his father's hand and 
fell down. When he got up he said, "Father, this time you 
take hold of my hand." And so the father reached down and 
took hold of the little boy's hand, and he reached up and held 

1. This story is suggested by "A Little Girl's Prayer," in Children's 
Story Sermons, by H. T. Kerr, p. 58. 



An Experiment in Worship 151 

tight to his father's hand. And the next time he stumbled he 
didn't fall, because he wasn't doing all the holding himself. * 

So God takes hold of our hands when we reach up to take hold 
of His. Whatever we try to do, He is there, ready to help us. 
He always wants to have us talk with Him about things. Of 
course we always want to think about Him in the morning, just 
as we say good morning to our fathers and our mothers or our 
friends. And just as our mothers sometimes come and talk with 
us a little while when we go to bed, so we like to speak with 
God before we drop off to sleep. 

But He likes us to come to Him any time at all. At noon or in 
the middle of the morning, or whenever we have something hard 
to do, or whenever something has made us happy, or whenever 
we have done wrong — then He wants us to feel that He shares 
with us all our troubles and all our pleasures. 

Sometimes we pray when we are alone, and sometimes we 
pray when we are all together, as we are in church or in Sunday 
school. Then we realize that we all belong to the great family 
of God, that whether old folks or young folks, we are all children 
of our Heavenly Father. 

8. Prayer, the choir singing the Amen 

O God, our Father, we thank Thee that whatever happens to 
us or whatever we do Thou art always our Friend. We are glad 
that we can come to Thee at any time, for Thou art always near 
us. Whether we are thinking of Thee or not, Thou art always 
thinking of us. Forgive us, our Father, that we so often forget 
Thee. We have often been disloyal to what we know to be right. 
At such times we are indeed not fit to be called Thy children. Yet 
Thy kindness never fails. We never get beyond Thy love and 
care. 

Help us, our Father, to think often of Thee and to talk with 
Thee about all that gives us happiness or pain. Give us strength 
and wisdom for every difficulty. Help us in our studies to be 
faithful and honorable. Help us in our games and good times to 

1. This incident is suggested by "The Father's Hand," in F. T. Bay- 
ley's Little Ten Minutes. 



152 Worship in the Sunday School 

be courteous and thoughtful for others, and fair-minded. Help 
us in our homes to be useful and obedient. 

So may we learn to turn to Thee at all times and to live in con- 
stant and loving companionship with Thee and with all Thy 
children, for the sake of our Master, Jesus Christ. Amen. 

9. Recessional Hymn, "Lord of all life." Tune, "Sun of my 
soul" 

Lord of all life, below, above, 

Whose light is truth, whose warmth is love. 

Centre and soul of every sphere, 

Yet to each loving heart how near! 

Sun of our life, Thy quickening ray 
Sheds on our path the glow of day; 
Star of our hope, Thy softened light 
Cheers the long watches of the night. 

Our midnight is Thy smile withdrawn; 
Our noontide is Thy gracious dawn; 
Our rainbow arch, Thy mercy's sign; 
All, save the clouds of sin, are Thine. 

Grant us Thy truth to make us free, 
And kindling hearts that burn for Thee; 
Till all Thy living altars claim 
One holy light, one heavenly flame. 

Other hymns of this Period were 

" The spacious firmament on high." Tune, " Creation" 

"God is my strong salvation." Tune, "Aurelia" 

" The King of Love my Shepherd is." Tune, " Dominus regit me" 

Other story material: "Climbing Alone," 1 "A 

1. Adapted from a story by Mrs. Margaret Gatty, as it is found in E. H. 
Sneath, et al., The Golden Ladder. 



An Experiment in Worship 153 

Child's Sermon" 1 (teaching respect and kindness 
to older people), "The Great Stone Face." 2 On 
one Sunday the organist played Schumann's 
"Traumerei" and "Romance," and on another 
the choir sang "O Lord, my Trust," by King 
Hall — a simple anthem with solo for soprano. 

In these services the attempt was made to make 
conscious the fact of mutual dependence, and to in- 
spire respect for the aged, or for things beautiful 
and noble, and to help the pupils realize more fully 
the reality of companionship with the Father. 

In the Periods on Faith and Loyalty the same 
general plan was followed, with sufficient variation 
in the program to keep the interest fresh. Other 
choir sentences were used. The hymns were chosen 
for their contribution to the mood of the Period. 
Some of the hymns of Faith were 

"Come, my soul, thou must be waking." Tune, "Edna "("Haydn") 
"Onward Christian soldiers." Tune, "St. Gertrude" 
"Immortal Love, forever full." Tune, "Serenity" 

An examination of these orders of service will 
indicate how they have followed out the implica- 
tions of the preceding chapters. Naturally the 
actual process of conducting a service cannot be 
put on paper, but some of the qualities of a live 
service will appear in these statements. The evi- 
dence of their presence will be brought out more 
fully in the next chapter. 

1. Adapted from Grimm, "Grandfather's Corner" as found in The 
Golden Ladder. 

2. Based on Hawthorne's story. 



154 Worship in the Sunday School 

1. The services are in harmony with the aims of 
Christian religious education as they are outlined 
in Chapter I. The attempt is made to have the 
children come to appreciate and make for the high- 
est social values, so far as they can be embodied 
in a service of worship. The values are those of 
certain personal relationships, including relation- 
ship with God, as they are conceived in the light 
of Christian ethics. As suggested in Chapter IV, 
they are summarized under the heads Gratitude 
Goodwill, Reverence, Faith, and Loyalty. 

2. The "religious emotion" as it is described by 
Colvin is not made conspicuous. No effort is made 
to arouse an extreme emotion through conscious 
recognition of dependence. Rather are all the 
moods and emotions given a religious significance. 
The fact of the mutual interdependence of the 
members of divine society is not omitted, however; 
and the moods, both tender and joyous, which are 
appropriate to this relation, are stimulated. 

3. The need of an actual experience in these 
attitudes and relations is recognized. Training in 
worship is given by providing services which the 
children can understand and appreciate and in 
which all can take part. 

4. The content of the Christian purpose is made 
concrete in terms of family relationships. These 
are continually emphasized and extended outward 
so as to include also friends, playmates, strangers, 
and so on. Further, the services try to make 
conscious a social and individual fellowship with 
God as the Father. 



An Experiment in Worship 155 

5. The mood of the services is usually buoyant. 
The hymns are all of cheerful music with good 
rhythm, and free and simple melody. They are 
easy to sing. So far as the tender emotions are 
aroused, it is for the sake of the whole reaction, 
such as gratitude or reverence, which were found 
to have tender elements. But this does not counter- 
act the general good feeling, nor indeed is a sym- 
pathetic tender emotion equivalent to the depression 
that comes from sad music, or from stories that 
have no note of cheer and joy. Contrast is one 
essential to emotion, and to touch upon the minor 
strings, only makes the pleasure in the final tone 
of good cheer more keen. In this atmosphere of 
general satisfaction the desired attitudes are devel- 
oped, with the confidence that the bent here given 
to ideas and desires will tend to become permanent, 
through the pleasure that is involved, as well as 
through repetition. 

6. The easy music, the progress from one element 
to another, the continual change of interest, from 
singing to speaking, or again to listening, the stand- 
ing up and sitting down — all these things serve to 
hold the attention on the service and to keep out 
conflicting ideas which would act as inhibitions 
of the present train of thought, and detract from 
the desired freedom. In the service the children 
are actively doing something two-thirds of the time. 
The variety in mode of expression gives a chance 
to any who might not fully respond with equal 
enthusiasm to all parts of the service. 



156 Worship in the Sunday School 

7. Because of their adaptation to the pupils, all 
can and do take part in these exercises. It will be 
noticed that the hymns are quite within the range 
of the children of the first grade, and yet are not 
inappropriate to those of sixteen years of age. The 
music is dignified yet simple enough for all. The 
choice of hymns with strong rhythm, and when 
possible, with a refrain, gives a quality of enthu- 
siasm to the singing and tempts all tc take part. 
The words involve few theological pres lppositions, 
and only such as can be explained. They are, 
rather, expressions of universal desires or moods, 
common to old and young alike. 

The same simplicity and universality makes the 
Common Prayers suited to all ages represented. 
No words are used which have no significance to 
childhood. No ideas are brought in which the 
pupils have had no dealings with. The attitudes 
expressed can be shared by all. The central theme 
of each prayer is that of the Period in which it 
is used. Each is an embodiment of the attitude 
to be developed. The children are thus actually 
within the experience of worship in a real sense. 
Their sympathetic use of the prayer is itself an 
expression of the attitude of the prayer. 1 

The story is sometimes told more particularly 
for the younger ones, and sometimes for the older 
ones. Usually attention is given especially to the 
younger pupils, in the belief that the rest will not 

1. Cf. the writer's article on "Teaching Young People to Pray," 
Pilgrim Teacher, cir. Oct. 1913. 



An Experiment in Worship 157 

be unaffected. They will feel the contrast in age 
and will have something of the tender interest 
which comes from watching the interest of a younger 
person. And the point of the story may be all the 
stronger for them just because it comes to them so 
indirectly. 

8. Careful attention is given to the esthetic 
quality of the services. The music used is of the 
best standard hymns. The words are chosen not 
only for their adaptability to the theme and the 
pupils, but for their poetic power also. The stories 
and prayers have a literary as well as a moral value, 
and, indeed, must have, to be most effective. The 
parts of the service are proportioned and fitted to- 
gether so as to support a single purpose. That is, 
there is unity and harmony. Nothing clashes. 
There is no friction. Each element of the program 
prepares the way for what comes next. For example, 
the sympathetic and general use of the Common 
Prayer is assured by the soft choir sentence which 
precedes it and during which the School is quietly 
bowed. 

9. The words Gratitude, Goodwill, and so on, 
are seldom used in the services. Rather is it the 
practice to present situations in which these atti- 
tudes are the necessary reactions. In the story 
given under I, to illustrate, the children followed 
the small boy's sudden realization of his obligation 
to his mother with such whole-hearted appreciation 
as to spontaneously cry out "No!" at the question, 
"Do you suppose he put the 55 cents in his pocket 



158 Worship in the Sunday School 

and went off whistling?" The attitude was thus 
made concrete in a form well within the under- 
standing of all. This is characteristic of each 
service. 

10. Definite instruction is attempted. That is, 
in the stories and prayers the pupils are helped 
to get new ideas or larger ideas about what they 
should be grateful for or to whom gratitude is due, 
or what prayer means, and the like. A good example 
is seen in the talk on prayer in IV. The leader's 
prayer aims to bring out more clearly the religious 
aspect of the attitudes by linking them up with 
the relationship to God and by continually em- 
phasizing fellowship with Him and harmony with 
His purpose, as the essence of the Christian life. 

11. The stories given show how the mood desired 
is connected with ideas or experiences already 
associated with that mood in the pupil's mind. 
In I, the attempt is made to reinforce a mood 
occasionally present by presenting a concrete 
situation which can be sympathetically followed 
by the children. The memories of mother-care 
are already attractive to them, and any ideas freshly 
connected with it are likely to be colored with the 
same warm feeling. Further, as was noted above, 
under (9), the children followed the story with 
zest and gave spontaneous assent to its significance 
even before the actual point was brought out. 
They made their own application. Their moral 
assent to the worth of the attitude was gained, 
and for the moment at least the attitude was adopted 
as their own. 



An Experiment in Worship 159 

12. The hearty cooperation of teachers and 
chorister has already been mentioned as a large 
factor in the success of the services. The teachers 
knew the prayers and sang the hymns, and by every 
action indicated their attitude of worship. The 
chorister trained the choir in the words and music 
of hymns and responses, and conducted the singing 
of the School. The organist assisted in training 
the children and furnished the musical background 
of worship which it is usually so hard to get. 1 

Thus we have illustrated the constructive program 
which has been carried out with apparent success 
in the Union School of Religion. It is a program 
based on a definite aim as to what should be accom- 
plished in the service of worship; upon a study of 
what worship has been able to accomplish in the 
past; and upon a psychological analysis of the 
methods by which the results desired could be 
attained. 

In order to avoid too hasty conclusions as to the 
value of the services, however, the necessity was 
felt of securing some evidence of what they accom- 
plished for the pupils. This evidence will be pre- 
sented in the next chapter. 

1. The matter of graded worship has not been discussed here as it was 
not a problem in the Union School of Religion. The above principles, 
however, are involved, and it is only a matter of properly applying these 
principles to the separate divisions of the school. The pupils of each 
division have specific needs and interests and these must be taken into 
account as well as the universal needs and interests spoken of in this chapter. 



CHAPTER VIII 
EVIDENCES OF THE RESULTS OF WORSHIP 

The General Method 

A twofold purpose of the services, as was brought 
out in Chapter IV, was (1) to develop attitudes, 
and (2) to rationalize these attitudes. It is not 
enough simply to arouse feeling; each feeling must 
be definitely and consciously related to a defined 
situation. Attitudes are not controlled directly, 
but through situations, either real or imaginary. 
These attitudes must be tied up with ideas. They 
must also be defined in the fight of the Christian pur- 
pose, else they are in danger of being merely formal 
or wrongly directed or too limited in scope. A child 
may feel goodwill toward his friend but not toward 
the servant. To associate the attitude of goodwill 
with all sorts and conditions of men is one step 
toward making the attitude Christian. 

In class work, our Sunday schools have frequently 
been content to deal with definitions and ideas 
of what attitudes the pupils ought to have, without 
directly associating the ideas with the attitudes 
themselves. On the other hand, in certain types 
of emotional services, schools have been satisfied 
with a sort of blind enthusiasm or a feeling not 
properly defined in terms of its purpose. In the 

160 



The Results of Worship 161 

services conducted by the writer, the attitude was 
given meaning and direction in the idea, and the 
idea was given dynamic in the feeling with which 
it was associated. 

Two questions then had to be asked about the 
effects of the services : (1) Were the attitudes better 
understood at the end than at the beginning of the 
Period (in each case about six weeks)? (2) Was the 
pupil's actual feeling-response any more adequate 
after the series of services? 

Before trying to answer these questions it was 
necessary to decide what kind of information should 
be sought. Evidently an extensive statistical study 
was not possible. The numbers were too few (130 
-150 pupils) 1 . The services were held only once a 
week and only six weeks could be allowed to a 
Period. The subject matter was such that a defi- 
nition of a unit of measurement was not feasible. 
Doubtless we have all felt the absence of goodwill 
in some person, and it may be that it will ultimately 
be possible to describe the point where there is 
"just not any" goodwill, and then define the various 
degrees of goodwill possessed by different persons or 
by the same person at different stages. But psy- 
chology has not yet succeeded in so analyzing such 
a complicated phenomenon as a human attitude. 

Yet this does not prevent our finding some 
evidence of change in the pupils' response. The 
judgment of the change will not be by a comparison 

1. This represents the attendance of pupils from Grade I through the 
High School. But the tests were confined to the first eight grades. 

11 



162 Worship in the Sunday School 

of units which can be charted. The change cannot 
be stated in units as in the measurement of arith- 
metical or spelling ability. It is sufficient for our 
purpose to show that in the case of some of the 
pupils some change in a particular direction took 
place, even though the amount of the change can- 
not be described. 

But it was essential to trace this change to the 
influence of the service — Not that the worship should 
be isolated from life, however; this was never the 
intention. It was always the practice to connect 
the worship with life, to make it a part of life. It 
was not intended to limit the value of the service 
to the time the children were in Chapel. Yet it 
is not unfair to claim for the service at least a share 
in the development of the attitudes, although prac- 
tice in "taking" the attitudes was afforded outside 
of the service itself. 

On the other hand, the teachers were cautioned 
not to try to give any special class instruction in 
the attitude under consideration until the end of 
the Period, 1 although they were to watch the way 
in which the pupils commented on the service. 
This was by no means an isolation of influence, yet 
it did give some assurance that considerable effect 
was produced in the service or as a direct conse- 
quence of it. 

Three types of evidence were used. (1) In order 
to discover changes in the pupils' ideas about 

1. Grade II at first used the general scheme of the Period- themes as a 
basis for selecting the material of the curriculum. The effect on Grade II 
may therefore be discounted. But see the teacher's opinion, pp. 172 and 
189. 



The Results of Worship 163 

the attitudes, certain questions for them to answer 
were given them just before and just after each of 
the first three Periods. The older pupils wrote 
the answers. With the younger ones, the answers 
were obtained by means of conversations with the 
teacher. (2) Each teacher was asked to give his 
carefully considered impression of the changes in 
attitude and his estimate of the relation of these 
changes to the services. (3) As to the atmosphere 
of the service itself and the attainment of a spirit 
of worship, Professor Coe, who was a regular at- 
tendant, and the chorister were asked to write brief 
statements giving their impression. It was at 
first desired to have the teachers observe and record 
spontaneous acts and words indicative of the atti- 
tude in question. For example, what did a child 
do when given his picture for the day, or when a 
story was told in class about someone who was in 
trouble and needed help? This observation, how- 
ever, required too much attention to be made 
systematic, and the results appear only as they 
guided the teachers' impressions. The first two 
types of evidence are given in the case of each of the 
attitudes of Gratitude, Goodwill, and Reverence. 
The last type appears at the end of the chapter. 

Effects of the Services 

The method of testing was as follows: In the 
first three grades the teachers devoted a part of 
the class hour to a conversation with the pupils, 
based on the little stories given below under each 



164 



Worship in the Sunday School 



Period. The pupils were encouraged to express 
their individual opinions and the teacher took 
note of what each said. In the higher grades, for 
the first three tests, the pupils were asked to write 
in class short answers to the questions given below 
with each Period. The teacher first told the story 
and then put the questions on the board so that the 
pupils could have them before them as they wrote. 
In the other tests the questions were handed to 
the pupils by the teacher, who explained what they 
were and asked them to write the answers at home, 
without any assistance, and mail them at once to 
the School. 

The writer then took all the answers of each grade 
and made a careful tabulation. It was found that, 
owing to absences and perhaps to a gradual decline 
of interest in the tests as they lost their novelty, 
the number of pupils answering both the prelimi- 
nary and final questions for each Period became 
smaller. The answers printed below, however, 
indicate the character of the change found among 
the pupils who took both sets of questions in each 
Period. In judging these results it must be remem- 
bered that this was not primarily a statistical study, 
and therefore only the general trend of the results 
is to be looked for. 



GRATITUDE 



Grades I-III 



The whole plan was talked over between the 
writer and each of the teachers, and the analysis 



The Results of Worship 165 

of gratitude as it appears in Chapter IV was ex- 
plained to them. Then the following description 
of the preliminary test on the idea of gratitude was 
put in their hands: 

"The following may serve as the subject of a conversation to 
be used as supplementary means for obtaining data concerning 
the present quality and range of the gratitude response. 

A. When is one grateful? Give many instances. 

B. When one is grateful, what does one do?" 

This test preceded the beginning of the six-week- 
period devoted to Gratitude. After the next 
period began, the following final test was provided: 

" 'What happened last week?' (Thanksgiving) 

'What does Thanksgiving mean?' (To give thanks. To show 
we are grateful) . 

'Do you remember how several Sundays ago I asked you to 
tell me at what times you thought people were grateful?' 

'Let's try again to-day to think: 

A. Of all the things one is grateful for; and 

B. Of all the things one does when he is grateful. 

' This time, after you have all answered the questions, I am 
going to tell you my answer.' 1 

Then proceed as before, putting down the answers in as 
individual a manner as possible." 

1. The following suggestion was made to the teachers at the same time. 
Its value as a supplemeut to the instruction of the services is obvious. The 
effect of it of course did not enter into the tests: 

"Have ready to tell them at the end any commonplace instances or occa- 
sions for gratitudes such as the fact that we always have reason to be grate- 
ful for fresh air, for sunlight, for houses to live in, food, clothing, homes, 
parents, school, presents and all the little courtesies of life. 

And then point out carefully in your own words that Gratitude means 
not only being glad that we have all these things, but also recognizing the 
fact that someone else has given them to us or done them for us, it may be 
at great cost to himself. At all events, these good things are evidence of 
someone's else kindly feelings for us. Therefore, gratitude also means the 
desire and effort to make the other person glad that he has done something 
for us. And this we usually do by doing something for him in return or by 
saying 'Thank you.' And as God is the Giver of all good, we are grateful 
to Him and try to please Him and do things for Him in every way we can." 



166 Worship in the Sunday School 

In Grade I each pupil whispered his answers to 
the teacher so that the rest could not hear. Sug- 
gestion from one pupil to another was thus elimi- 
nated. It was apparent from the first test that 
the pupils had such a dim idea of what it means 
to be grateful that they could formulate nothing 
definite about it at all. The answers to the second 
test are all given. They evidently concern the 
what-one-does side of the matter. 

1 . I gave the elevator man a penny the other day. 

2. I changed father's slippers the other day when he was tired. 

3. I gave my brother my top to play with. 

4. I'm always helping mother. 

5. I say thank you to the elevator man. 

6. I wrote a little letter to mother thanking her for a birthday 

party she gave me. 

7. I let my brother play with my new electric engine. 

8. I said thank you when some one gave me a seat in the subway 

one day last week. 

In Grade II the pupils heard what each other 
said. But suggestion was partly avoided by putting 
the question to the whole group and then having 
them think quietly about it. Each was to find 
an answer and then keep it to tell to the whole 
class. The writer witnessed this experiment and 
it was evident that the pupils understood that each 
was to give the answer he had thought of before 
the others gave theirs. The following is a sample 
answer : 

Preliminary Test Final Test 



A. When Christmas comes. A. Food, clothing, brothers, sis- 

ters, fathers, mothers, homes. 



The Results of Worship 167 

B. I felt glad. I gave a present B. People should be good and 
to everybody. kind for all these things. 

In Grade III the answers were not attached to 
individuals and it is probable that suggestion 
played a role. The results do not indicate the 
same degree of change as do the above, though they 
are not without value. 

Preliminary Test Final Test 



Question A 

Parents. Parents. 

Brothers and sisters. Brothers and sisters. 

Food. Food. 

Flowers and sunshine. Clothing. 

Pets. Eyesight and hearing. 

Jesus. Health. 

The country. All the pretty things 

in the world. 

Christmas. 

Toys. 

Playmates. 

Question B 

Thanks God. Be good and kind. 

Thanks one's parents. Do many things for poor people 

Tries to be good. at Christmas. 

Gives things to the poor. Give things to blind and crip- 

pled children to cheer them. 

Grades V, VI and VIII 

The matter was talked over with each teacher 
as in the case of Grades I-III, and the following 
announcement was made: 



168 Worship in the Sunday School 

"The following may serve as the subject of an essay to be 
used as supplementary means for obtaining data concerning the 
present quality and range of the gratitude response. 

A. When is one grateful? Give many instances. 

B. When one is grateful, what does one do? 

Please do not vary the wording of the questions if you can 
help it. The length of the essay might be from a few words to 
a couple of pages, according to the age and inclination of the 
pupil." 

The final test was presented in this way: 

"Begin by mentioning the fact that all our great annual festi- 
vals, such as Christmas, Easter and Thanksgiving, are for some 
real purpose. They mean something definite. Now what is the 
real meaning of Thanksgiving? What is it for? (To give thanks. 
To express gratitude.) 

Then go on to ask, 'Do you remember the questions that you 
wrote on a few weeks ago? For some weeks we have been think- 
ing about gratitude. Suppose we try again to put down: 

A. All the times when anybody is grateful, and 

B. All the things that one does when he is grateful. 

This time I am going to write, too, and when you have finished 
I will read you what I have written.' "i 

These results were written and so more surely 
individual than those of the younger pupils. The 
time for the tests was taken out of the class hour, 
as before. 

Grade V 

The first test was given as described. In the 
second test, however, the wording of the questions 
was changed so that the results of Question A 
cannot be compared. The answers to Question B, 
however, showed such changes as the following: 

1. See note 1, p. 165. 



The Results of Worship 



169 



Preliminary Test 
When one is grateful what 
does one do? 

We thank the helper. 



be 



Final Test 
In what ways can I 
grateful? 

By thanking God for having 
such great things happen, and 
days for thanks, and showing 
gratitude that so great people 
were born, and by showing 
gratitude by helping others. 

Grade VI Examples 

Question A (see p. 168) 
Pupil No. 1 
Preliminary Test Final Test 



A person is grateful when 
some one does a kind deed for 
them, such as, I am grateful 
to anyone who will let me ride 
when I am tired. I was grateful 
this summer, when we were on 
a mountain a girl lent me her 
blanket. 

Pupil 

One is grateful when one falls 
in the river and gets pulled out. 

If you don't know how to 
spell a word and some one tells 
you. 

Question B 
Pupil 

When one is grateful to the 
person they try to pay back the 
person. 



One is grateful for homes, 
schools, care, sun, rain, trees, 
grass, food, clothes, friends, all 
kindnesses, good times, safety, 
pets, toys, and so many other 
things that one cannot name. 



No. 2 

One is grateful for the food 
he gets. One is grateful for 
home. One is grateful for the 
things one has. 

{see p. 168) 

No. 3 

When one is grateful they 
pray and thank God. When 
people are thankful for a thing 
some one does for you, you pay 
it back or at least you thank 
them. 



170 Worship in the Sunday School 

Pupil No. 4 

Sometimes he sends them a We try to take care of our 

present. Sometimes he gives home. This is the way we 

them a medal. Sometimes send show our gratitude. We try 

them some money. to use our time well. 

It is to be noted that some of the children, rep- 
resented by pupils 1 and 2, came to think of grati- 
tude as appropriate to the common experiences 
of life rather than as a feeling reserved for such 
rare occasions as rescue from drowning, and so on. 
Pupils 3 and 4 illustrate how the way to express 
gratitude came to be more fully appreciated by 
some of the children. 

Grade VIII Boys 
An Example 

Preliminary Test Final Test 



Question A 

I am grateful when someone One is grateful when some 

gives me something or when one does or gives something to 

someone does something for me. him. I am grateful for the peo- 

At Christmas and on my birth- pie around me and the blue sky 

day when I receive presents I overhead. I am grateful for the 

am grateful. When I had a lot grass, the snow, the rain, and 

of work to do and I wanted to the small birds which make 

go somewheres with a friend my sweet music in the warm days 

mother said I didn't have to do of summer, 
the work, then I was grateful. 



The Results of Worship 171 

Question B 

When I was grateful I When I am grateful I express 
thanked my parents and after- my thanks by letter or by 
wards I helped my mother or words. And I usually give my 
my father by doing a double benefactors presents or some- 
amount of work. Last summer thing to show my gratefulness 
for my birthday I got a tele- when I get a chance, such as 
scope, and to show my thanks I Christmas or on their birthdays, 
washed the carriage, painted 
the porch and beat the rugs 
very willingly without being 
told a second time. 

A comparison of the answers showed that all three 
boys who took both tests "domesticated" the idea 
of the things one should be grateful for. The ex- 
pression of gratitude was well understood from the 
start, as is to be expected. 

Grade VIII Girls 

The girls of Grade VIII answered only the final 
questions. But these answers indicate the effect 
of the services, as shown in the following example. 
The others are of similar type. The single excep- 
tion is of a girl who entered the class at the close 
of the Period. 

A. We are grateful when our mothers and fathers help us and 
do things for us. We are grateful when our friends help us or 
send us things. We are grateful for our food, clothing, parents, 
sisters, brothers and for everything that we get. 

B. When one is grateful they usually give thanks and some- 
times return it in some good thing. 



172 Worship in the Sunday School 

On summing up the results of Grades V, VI and 
VIII it was found that 87 per cent of those taking 
both tests showed ositive advance in the idea of 
either the expression of gratitude or the range of its 
application. 

As was indicated on p. 163, the observations of 
spontaneous acts could not be carried out system- 
atically. But under the second class of evidence 
the teachers gave some valuable impressions, of 
importance for both the "idea" and "feeling" 
aspects of the attitude. 

GENERAL IMPRESSIONS 

Grade I 

"It is very difficult to say, I feel, to what extent the little 
pupils of Grade I have changed with reference to their feelings 
of gratitude. The tests showed very plainly reactions of joy and 
tenderness, but there were only two cases where the children 
expressed by spontaneous acts their feelings of gratitude. 

"If there has been any change, it is: 

" (1) In making them conscious of the fact that all things are 
given them richly to enjoy; that they should be grateful for 
these things which they have, and for all the joys and pleasures 
of their little lives. In a word, the work has helped them to 
reach beyond the ego. 

" (2) In steadily making greater the range of objects toward 
which the feeling is directed." 

Grade II 

"In October some of the children spoke of being grateful for 
unusual things, e. g., for Christmas presents, birthday parties. 
These same children in the next test mentioned many common 
everyday occurrences and things, e. g., sunshine, the love of 
father and mother, home, flowers, etc. 



The Results of Worship 173 

"A few of the children were in the Horace Mann School last 
year and said every day the prayer: 

' For this new morning with its light, 
For rest and shelter of last night, 
For books and food, for love and friends, 
For everything Thy goodness sends, 
We thank Thee, Heavenly Father.' 

These children mentioned in October such things as are noted in 
the prayer. The others showed the marked change spoken of. 

"The story about Bradley's bill to mother influenced the 
children very strongly. Many came to me with accounts of 
service rendered at home and of things done for playmates." 

Grade III 

"In the second Goodwill, Gratitude, and Reverence tests the 
children showed that their feelings were extended to a much 
greater number of objects. In the first tests it was difficult to get 
each child to name even one object toward which these feelings 
were directed; whereas in the second tests, each child wanted to 
give several. The question is, of course, whether this shows 
growth or merely memory." 

Grade VII 

"Expressions of gratitude in my class seem always turned 
toward their parents and not toward their Heavenly Father. I 
think the idea of gratitude is not so noticeable with them as with 
the average children. (Of course they are well-trained and say 
'thank you.' This is habit from training and not gratitude.)" 

From all these various tests and observations it 
seems fair to conclude that at the end of the Period 
most of the pupils tested did have a better notion 
of what Gratitude means than they had at the be- 
ginning. 



174 Worship in the Sunday School 

GOODWILL 

Grades I-III 

After the general analysis of Goodwill (Chapter 
IV) had been made known to the teachers, the fol- 
lowing test was given, before the Period on this 
attitude began: 

"Please make this test a part of the lesson routine. 

"Read or say the following paragraph, and then get the pu- 
pils to tell what the teacher, the mother and the playmate said 
about the boy. Please keep the answers of individuals as far as 
circumstances will allow. 

"A man from a far country once came to visit America, to 
find out all about the things that the people here thought were 
right. He wanted to know whether the people were good to one 
another; for in his country the people were not good to one 
another, but were hard-hearted, and stingy and quarrelsome. 
One day he heard of a boy about . . years old, who was generous 
and kind and good-natured and sympathetic to everyone. The 
stranger didn't know what these things mean, so he asked the 
boy's teacher and his mother and his playmate just what the 
boy did that made people call him generous and kind and good- 
natured and sympathetic. Now what do think his teacher, his 
mother, and his playmate said that he didf 

At the close of the Period the following final test 
was arranged: 

"Do you remember the story I told you some time ago about 
the man from a far country who didn't know what it means to 
be generous and kind and good-natured? He didn't know what 
goodwill means, did he? So he asked the mother and teacher and 
playmate of a little boy what he did that made people think 
he was sympathetic and kind and good-natured. This time let's 
pretend that I am the stranger, and you tell me what goodwill 
means. You tell me toward whom people feel goodwill and what 



The Results of Worship 175 

they do to show it. When you have told me what you think, 
I'll tell you what / think goodwill is. 1 

"Then proceed as before, putting down the answers in as in- 
dividual a manner as possible." 

It was not the definition of the word Goodwill 
which was sought, but the filling up and the broaden- 
ing out of the whole idea in terms of the situation 
and the individual's response. The word was not 
used at all in the first test. It is used in the second 
so as to help round up the attitude in a formula. 
There is danger here of making the tests themselves 
an educational factor, but they are so only in the 
sense that they help in attaching the word goodwill 
to the thing itself. 

A comparison of some of the answers from these 
grades will indicate the general nature of the results. 

Grade I 
Preliminary Test Final Test 



It seems to me he was a good He would lend children things 
boy. when they came to play. 

I believe he was kind and He was kind and helpful to 
helpful to others. others and did things for them. 

The content of goodwill was not unknown to 
some of these six-year-olds at the start. For some 
of the rest it gained in concrete detail. As before, 
these answers were given secretly to the teacher. 

1. The following suggestion was also made, but as in the case of Grati- 
tude it did not affect the test: ' ' Be ready to tell at the end, in your own words 
and with illustrations, that goodwill means being glad when others are glad 
and sorry when they are in trouble. It means being ready to forgive anyone 
who does wrong or is spiteful. And we show our goodwill by being cheerful 
and courteous toward friends and strangers, by being kind to those who need 
help or sympathy, by being generous to our playmates, etc." 



176 Worship in the Sunday School 

Grade II 

The conditions of the test in this grade were the 
same as in the preceding Period. 

Examples 

Preliminary Test Final Test 



His mother said he gave Be good to all people, be 
things to the poor. His teacher kind to all people and help 
said he did good work. them. 

He was happy and did not We show goodwill by being 
quarrel. Let others decide on nice to people, loving people, 
games. obeying father and mother and 

helping them by giving things 
away. 

Some who were present at the final conversation 
distinctly had the idea of goodwill as inclusive of 
all, as well as just the nearby folks, which was 
brought out in the services, and which none of the 
children manifested in the first test. These results 
are discounted, however, by the fact that the teacher 
based part of her class work on the outline followed 
in the services. 

Grade III 

The answers are listed fully without reference to 
individuals : 

PreUminary Test 

Obeyed the first time he was told to do anything. Was quiet 
when his mother felt ill. Helped with the house work. Kept his 
room neat. Didn't fuss when he couldn't have his own way. 



The Results of Worship 177 

Studied his lessons and was good in school. Played the games 
his friends wished and didn't always want his own way. Let 
other children play with his toys. Sent toys he had outgrown 
to hospitals and to poor children. Answered politely when 
spoken to. 

Final Test 

People toward whom goodwill is felt: Brothers and sisters, 
playmates, God and Jesus, grandparents, teachers, friends, poor 
people, parents and everybody. 

How goodwill is shown: 

(1) To parents: By obeying promptly and pleasantly. By 
seeking out helpful things to do and not waiting to be asked, 
e. g., hanging up one's clothes, putting away toys, asking if there 
are errands to be done before one goes out to play. Be quiet when 
parents are tired, sick or busy. 

(2) To playmates: Play games desired by others. Don't be 
disagreeable when you have to be "it" in a game. Let others 
play with your toys. 

(3) To the poor: Give toys and clothes. 

(4) To everybody: Be nice and pleasant always. 

There was an evident increase in the range of 
ideas here, but a good deal of this may be due to 
suggestion or the desire to add something to the 
list. 1 

Grades IV-VIII 

The preliminary test described in the following 
paragraph was written during the lesson hour: 

"Please make this as much a part of the lesson routine as 
possible. 

"Read or say the following paragraph, putting on the board 
or on paper the items 'generous, kind, good-natured and sym- 
pathetic,' and the names 'teacher, mother and playmate,' so that 

1. Cf. the teacher's comments on p. 173. 
12 



17S Worship in the Sunday School 

the pupils may all have them in mind. Then ask them to write 
what the teacher, the mother and playmate said; the girls writing 
about the girl and the boys about the boy. 

"A man from a far away country once came to visit America, 
to find out all about the things that people here thought were 
right. He wanted to know whether the people were good to one 
another, for in his country people were not good to one another, 
but were hard-hearted and stingy and quarrelsome. One day he 
heard of a boy and a girl about . . years old, who were generous 
and kind and good-natured and sympathetic to everyone. The 
stranger didn't know what these things mean; so he asked the 
teacher, the mother and the playmate of each of the children 
just what each did that made people call them generous and 
kind and good-natured and sympathetic. Now what do you 
think that their teachers, their mothers and their playmates 
said that they did? Girls, you tell about the girl, and boys, you 
tell about the boy." 

The final test was taken at home. The form was 
as follows: 

Name Grade 

Date 

Please answer without any assistance and mail surely by 
Tuesday night: 

If you were to tell a child what "goodwill" means, what would 
you say to him: Toward whom do people feel goodwill; and 
what do they do that makes you sure they really feel it? 

The following warning was given to the teachers: 

"These envelopes contain the final 'Idea' test on Goodwill. 
The pupils are asked to write the answers to the questions and 
mail them by Tuesday night surely. Repeat what you said last 
time 1 about getting the answers in promptly and about the real 
help they will be to the school if they are carefully made." 

Most of the pupils of Grade IV understood that 

1. Referring to the first test on Reverence, also written at home. 



The Results of Worship \l& 

people should feel kindly toward their friends and 
playmates as this typical answer to the first test 
shows : 

Let other children have their way. Do things for their mother. 
To be obedient for their teachers. If children hurt themselves, 
sympathize with them. If they have candy they share it with 
others. If some one should break anything of theirs, they don't 
get cross with them. 

The answer of the same child to the second test 
was: 

I would tell a child that goodwill meant kindly feeling to one 
another. You should feel goodwill toward one another. People 
make you think they feel goodwill when they are happy and 
kind and good. 

Apparently the notion of being kind and good- 
natured was associated with the word goodwill, 
but the meaning of goodwill was not extended 
beyond the immediate circle, except in the case of 
three children, who got the idea that kindness and 
goodness were meant for everyone. 

With the Fifth Grade there was more indication 
of progress. One pupil answered the preliminary 
test thus: 

My reply to the stranger's question: Generous means to give 
up something that you want very much. Kind means to be 
generous. Good-natured means to be happy. Sympathetic 
means to sympathize with somebody. 

The same pupil's answers to the final test were : 

(1) If I were going to tell a child what goodwill means I would 
say it means to have kind feelings. 

(2) People feel goodwill toward everybody. 



180 Worship in the Sunday School 

(3) To make a person really feel it you have to be kind to 
them. 

In Grade VI most of the pupils had already caught 
the broader significance of goodwill, at least in 
idea, before the series began. The following is a 
typical example: 

Preliminary Test 

The boys thought that the boy was good-natured because he 
always agreed to the games. He was kind because he never 
hit any little boy. If he had some candy he would always give 
half to his playmates. If he saw a boy hurt he would pick him 
up and bring him to his mother. 

The teacher said: He gave a boy half of his only pencil. If he 
saw a boy all by himself he would go over and play with him. 

Final Test (Same pupil) 

Goodwill means kind feeling toward one another. You should 
feel goodwill toward everybody. (You know their goodwill) by 
their kind actions toward you. 

The following is an example from Grade VII : 

Preliminary Test 

When the foreigner asked the teacher about Frank the teacher 
said that Frank was kind because when he went to Sunday 
school he gave some money to help the poor. He also helped 
children who were in need of it. 

When he asked Frank's mother about Frank's qualities she 
said he was good-natured and kind to her whenever he came in 
from his afternoon play. 

The foreigner asked Frank's playmates about this generosity. 
They said that he always let the other boys use his things and 
that he was always very sympathetic with the other boys who 
did not win. The playmates also said that he was very good- 
natured about all his games and they liked him very much. 



The Results of Worship 181 

They said that by having all these good qualities he not only 
made the games nicer for the other boys, but had a better time 
himself. 

Final Test 

(1) Goodwill means feeling well toward somebody else. Feel- 
ing as if they were your brother. 

(2) Their relations and friends. People who are working for 
the same cause as they are. 

(3) They help the people out of difficulties and take part in 
their troubles and pleasures. They are kind to them and give 
them things. 

Although evidencing a fine appreciation of the 
meaning of goodwill from the start, the above 
example shows an enlargement of the idea in the 
final test. We should expect a better understanding 
of the attitudes with the higher grades than with 
the lower. As to whether the attitude itself is 
properly joined with the idea will be discussed 
later. 

The girls of Grade VIII gave conscientious an- 
swers to the questions. The idea of the significance 
of goodwill in human relationships was already so 
well grounded that no great change could be ex- 
pected in the second set. 

From this brief description it will be seen that 
goodwill was for the most part fairly understood 
by the pupils. But even so, there was a genuine 
advance toward its universal application and a 
more complete grasp of the meaning of its expres- 
sion on the part of fourteen pupils. It is not strange 
that the Fourth Grade should be slow to acquire 
a larger social point of view, since they are only 



182 Worship in the Sunday School 

nine to ten years of age. That they know how to 
express their goodwill to their playmates and families 
is itself something of an attainment. That they 
actually do express it more widely is seen from the 
quotation from their teacher's comments on page 183 
under General Impressions. 1 This is true also of 
the younger grades, where general good feeling is 
pretty well understood. 

GENERAL IMPRESSIONS 

Grade I 

"The children showed greater change in their feelings of good- 
will than in those of gratitude. Not only was the range of objects 
toward which they had these feelings enlarged, and the intensity 
accordingly increased, but I have felt that there is greater sin- 
cerity of feeling. 

"This may be due to the previous tests on gratitude, apparently 
unsuccessful, to constant and various presentations of the idea, 
and in part to the season of the year at which these tests were 
made." 

Grade IIP 

After giving the results of the second test on 
goodwill the teacher of this grade went on to say : 

"When the teachers were mentioned one boy said that he 
and other boys in his day-school class didn't show goodwill to 
their teacher, but had a great deal of fun teasing her, for which 
she rapped their knuckles. This he thought was not goodwill on 
her part. 

"One of the girls suggested that if the boy try showing a little 
goodwill perhaps the teacher wouldn't rap his knuckles. The 

1. Cf. also the description of class prayers, pp. 190-194. 

2. See above, p. 173 under Gratitude. 



The Results of Worship 183 

general opinion of the class was that the boy's behavior was 
much to be deplored. 

"When playmates were under discussion, this same boy said 
that he knew a boy toward whom it was impossible to feel good- 
will. This other boy is in the habit of hitting him, and he takes 
great pleasure in returning the courtesy in kind. He was advised 
by one of the girls to 'walk away' next time the boy showed a 
disposition to quarrel, and one of the other girls suggested that 
he treat the boy so kindly at all times that he will learn to be 
kind and polite too. 

"Both of these discussions were carried on by the pupils quite 
voluntarily and without suggestion from me." 

Grade IV 

" Grade IV seems to be growing in responsiveness, interest and 
desire to fulfil every obligation. The children respond royally to 
every call for service. Manifestations of this : 

"The home work is always done well according to the ability 
of the pupils. Any exception to this has been due to physical or 
mental inability, and every effort has been put forth by these 
children to 'make up.' About half the class have done much 
more home work than required. . . . 

"The children have been glad to sing in the choir, even those 
who earlier in the year thought it almost impossible to be at 
Sunday school by 9.30. (The choir meets at 9.00) 

"Our weekly offerings seem to be growing larger. The children 
show great interest in amounts, and in what shall be done with 
the money. 

"The children all responded to the suggestion to make scrap 
books for hospital children and carried out the suggestion — 
doing more than I expected of them. 

"The different ones who have acted as class officers have 
shown great pride and interest, and have made a number of 
suggestions about their work which we have carried out." 



184 Worship in the Sunday School 

Grade VII 

"In goodwill, my pupils have made the most noticeable im- 
provement. As the feeling of reverence is due, I believe, to the 
printed prayers, so I believe the feeling of goodwill is due to the 
stories told in chapel. My pupils are ready to do anything for 
anybody and do it cheerfully, if they think the person is needy. 
This feeling does not exist toward ordinary mortals." 1 

REVERENCE 

The whole content of the idea of Reverence could 
not, of course, be brought out in the brief number 
of services held during a Period. The effort was 
therefore concentrated on associating the feeling 
of reverence with a few important "objects" with- 
out trying to make clear to the younger children 
that this attitude was of the same kind in each 
case, and could be called reverence. It was thought, 
however, that with the upper grades more might 
be accomplished by turning the pupils' attention 
to the various elements of reverence and by assisting 
them to an experience of the attitude itself. The 
tests were taken at home as before. The form of 
the preliminary test was: 

Name Grade 

Date 

Please answer without any assistance and mail surely by 
Tuesday night: 

1. Since this was written the class has shown a remarkable change of 
feeling toward a certain local charity which they had come to feel did not 
longer need their support, and which they had grown tired of assisting. 
The teacher kept bringing the matter to their attention in a quiet way. 
Finally one of the class reported some instances of need at the institution. 
After they had thrashed the matter over, pro and con, for a while, the class 
unanimously voted to give practically all they had in the treasury to this 
institution! 



The Results of Worship 185 

If you were to tell a little child what it means to be reverent, 
what would you say to him? When, where and toward what is a 
person reverent? What does he do to show his reverence? 

Similarly, the form of the final test was: 

Name Grade 

Date 

Please think over these questions and answer them without any 
assistance. Mail by Tuesday night. 

When is a person reverent? Where is a person reverent? 
Toward what is he reverent? What does he do to show his 
reverence? 

The following is a sample answer from the Fourth 
Grade : 

Preliminary Test 

I would tell him he had to be a minister. A person is reverent 
if he is a minister. He shows he believes in God and talks about 
him. 

Final Test 

(1) When he is good. (2) In church. (3) He is reverent 
toward God. (4) Do what God wishes him or her to do. 

The results in Grade V were generally negative, 
indicating no change in the idea. Two, however, 
included age as an object of reverence. The rest 
confined the experience to God and Church. 

An Example from Grade VI 

Preliminary Test 

If you hear some beautiful music or if you go to a beautiful 
church, one feels as if he wanted to worship. You feel reverent 
if you worship God. To obey and honor. 



186 Worship in the Sunday School 

Final Test 

When he feels that there is a person greater than he. In church. 
Toward God and his parents. Pray and obey and go to church. 

Two sets of answers from the Eighth Grade girls, 
although they do not help much in the conclusions, 
are nevertheless so good as to warrant quoting in 
full: 

First Pupil. First Test. A person is reverent when he pays 
close attention to what is being said. One place where a person 
is reverent is in Church. A person is reverent toward what is 
said and done. In order to show his reverence a person must pay 
attention. 

Second Test. (1) When some one has done a great thing, then 
a person is reverent toward this person. (2) When the person is 
with some one who has been very kind or has done a great and 
good thing. (3) He is reverent toward anyone who is kind and 
generous and pleasant. (4) He must be kind to the person and if 
that person had done something for him he must do something in 
return. 

Second Pupil. First Test. If I were to tell a little child when 
to be reverent, where and to whom, I should say that he should 
be reverent when he enters the house of God or when he is speak- 
ing of some one who has done a great service to his country or 
who deserves reverence, even a man who is working for the good 
of some charity, church, town. Where: In the house of God, 
tabernacle or church. Toward your father and mother and 
Christ and God above all of course, and all the saints, and true 
and honorable citizens of any country or place, anyone who is 
honestly and conscientiously working to do good. 

Second Test. (1) A person is reverent when he is in church, 
when he is thinking or speaking or praying to God, when he 
sees some magnificent work of nature or some picture, etc., that 
makes him feel that there is some good in the world. (2) A 
person is reverent in church, before old people who have led good 
lives, before some statue or painting representing Christ or the 



The Results of Worship 187 

saints or virgin. (3) He is reverent toward God, Christ, the 
saints, holy pictures or statues representing them, toward good 
pure men or women who have led good lives and have helped 
their fellows rather than themselves. (4) This is a rather diffi- 
cult question to answer because nearly everyone shows his rever- 
ence in a different way. Some by merely taking off their hats 
while in church or as is written in (3), others by showing it in 
their lives, by that I mean that they follow Christ in their way, 
to show reverence for his teaching and by the pure and helping 
lives they lead. 

The teachers were not specially requested to 
comment on the attitude of reverence. The Seventh 
Grade teacher, however, volunteered the following 
account : 

"The pupils are increasingly reverent during prayer in the 
chapel and in class. Last year I heard whispering during prayer. 
Have never heard it recently. The pupils bow their heads in 
class waiting for me to pray at the opening of the lesson. They 
like the printed prayers. The response seems to be a tender 
feeling, not one of fear or awe." 

These comments put us in touch with the spirit 
of reverence itself which the services aimed to culti- 
vate. But the above account must not be taken 
as the sole criterion or the conclusive evidence of 
the effects of the services. Further evidence of the 
presence of a real and intelligent feeling of reverence 
will incidentally appear in the following paragraphs, 
which are quotations from the observations of the 
teachers concerning the relation of the services to 
the attitudes. 



188 Worship in the Sunday School 

Grade I 

"The chapel services prove of great interest and value to the 
children, especially as new features are introduced from time to 
time. A new school prayer, an organ solo, or a selection by the 
choir is always noted by them with evident pleasure and satis- 
faction. Last Sunday morning I tested the class as to their 
reaction to that morning's chapel service. 
11 children were present. 
7 enjoyed the story most. 
4 reproduced the story in good style. 
1 liked the organ best. 

1 liked the new opening sentence by the choir — 'Holy, holy, 
holy' — saying, 'It was much prettier than the one they 
used to sing.' 
1 liked the hymn 'God is my Strong Salvation' — because of its 

familiarity. 
1 made no report." 

The following comment from the same teacher 
was unsolicited: 

"You may be interested to know that my pupils brought up 
the matter of chapel service to-day, before I had had opportunity 
to get fairly settled in the class room, which is, I think, an indi- 
cation that many of them are attending to that service very 
definitely, are selecting and judging all the while. I was not 
able to go into their reasons for their choice to-day, but you may be 
interested in the vote taken. There were ten of my pupils present. 

7 selected the story as the most interesting part of the service. 

4 were able to give a fair reproduction of the story. 

3 found the music most delightful. 

2 commented on the new choir sentence. 

"These pupils have now, I feel, found their places in the Sun- 
day school. Now they are not only enabled to take part in the 
service, but they do it with comparatively great power. They 
seem to feel a strong relationship to the other classes." 



The Results of Worship 189 

Grade II 1 

"The children made these statements about chapel services: 
'I like the chapel services because the windows are so beautiful. 
I like the stories, I like our prayers. I like to march in with the 
other children. I like the music. I like to bow my head when 
we pray. The chapel is very still and I like it.' 

"I notice that the children all bow their heads in prayer, that 
they are quieter, that they enjoy the stories and give better 
attention. That they have more pride in passing in and out of 
the chapel. That fewer children are tardy, because they do not 
want to miss chapel. That they are anxious to take part in the 
prayers and songs." 

Grade III 

The teacher of Grade III asked her pupils to write 
what they thought about the chapel service. These 
are some of the replies : 

1. First I like the prayers. Then I like the stories. And I like 
the singing. And I don't dislike anything. And I can't think of 
anything that ought to be there. 

2. What I like: To pray, sing and be good. What I don't 
like: Not to play in chapel. 

3. I like the stories best. I like the singing next best. I don't 
like the order in chapel. I think the order could improve. 

4. I like the stories I hear in chapel on Sunday morning be- 
cause they teach us a lesson and they are very beautiful. I like 
the singing because I am happy when they are singing. The 
windows in the chapel are so pretty with the light shining through 
them. 

5. I like having the song cards best. There is nothing I do not 
like. There is nothing I would like to have (in addition). 

1. Other comments of this teacher on the service are found under Gen- 
eral Impressions on Gratitude, page 172. 



190 Worship in the Sunday School 

The teacher of Grade IV writes: 

" I account for the fine spirit manifested in the class : 

(1) Because of the universal feeling of goodwill and good 
home training shown by all these children from the first. 

(2) Because the whole influence of the School has fostered 
and increased this." 

The Sixth Grade teacher spoke in her report 
of the marked effect of the stories told in the ser- 
vices upon her various pupils, and quoted their 
comments on them. 

The comments of the teacher of Grade VII ap- 
pear under the various General Impressions above 
quoted. 

Toward the end of the year the pupils of the 
Fourth Grade suggested that it would be a good 
plan for the class to have a prayer of its own to use 
in its class exercises. So the teacher said that any 
of the children who wished to do so might bring, on the 
following Sunday, what they thought would be an 
appropriate prayer. These ten prayers were vol- 
unteered by different pupils. They are reproduced 
as handed in. 1 

Thank you for our food and shelter clothing and father and 
mother and health. Forgive us if we have done evil and have 
forgotten. Help us to be reverent. 

Our Father in Heaven, we thank Thee for our blessings. For 
our shelter and our food, for our mothers" and our fathers. Help 
us to be good and kind to the poor and unfortunate. Help us to 
be Thy Greatful Children. 

1. Corrections in spelling are made where the meaning would otherwise 
be obscured. 



the Results of Worship 1§1 

Our Heavenly Father we thank thee for all the things thou 
givest us. We have sinned many times but we hope thou wilt 
forgive us. You have given us our earthly mothers and fathers. 
Our eyes to see with, our nose to smell with, our arms and hands 
to feel with, our legs to walk with, our ears to hear with, and 
our mouths to eat with and many other wonderful things. 

We thank thee and wish thee to help us to use them in the 
right way. 

This we ask in Jesus name. Amen. 

Dear Lord, help us to be good, and help us to have sweet tempers 
and be kind to all people who are worse off than we. Please help 
us to be satisfied with all we have. And please give us all we need. 
Please forgive us all our sins, for we are sorry for all the wrong 
we do. Sometimes we know we're doing something wrong, and 
then we are very sorry, other times we forget. We thank Thee, 
Heavenly Father, for all you have given us. All the toys that 
we have, our lovely homes, and the good schools we are sent to, 
and all the food and clothing we have. And we thank Thee 
heartily for our fathers and mothers whom Thou hast sent to 
care for us, and we pray that nothing may happen to them. Amen. 

Lord we come before you in prayer. Forgive our sins even 
as we iorgive our friends sins. Thou hast made a vast and beauti- 
ful earth for us, that we may be happy. But most of all thou hast 
given us our parents and friends and brothers and sisters. Help 
us in the path of life, give us strength to do wonderful things and 
minds to think. We love thee even as everyone else. Amen. 

O King and Father 

of us all, 
We come to thee 
To worship thee 
That loveth all, 
Pray hear our call. 

Our Father in Heaven; we thank Thee for Thy watchful care 
over Thy little children. Please Oh God forgive our sins for we 
are but children. Amen. 



192 Worship in the Sunday School 

Oh, God our Father; We thank Thee for all Thy bountiful 
gifts and loving kindness, and we pray to Thee to forgive our 
sins and help us to do right. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. 
Amen. 

Oh God our Father we thank Thee for all Thy kindness, and 
we pray to thee to forgive our sins. Amen. 

Our Heavenly Father, Thou hast given us so many things* 
we want to thank you for all your blessings, and many kindnesses- 
Help us to lead good and noble lives, and be with us always. 
Amen. 

We thank thee for the many things you have given and here- 
after give us. 

A somewhat similar incident occurred in Grade V 
which is here described by the teacher: 

"Since last January, different members of the class have vol- 
unteered to come on the platform to lead in prayer. The leader 
always announced the prayer he or she wished to give, while 
the other members of the class joined in concert. 

One Sunday in March, the children were asked if each one 
would like to write a little prayer of his own. It was interesting 
to note each child voluntarily coming to the desk for pencil and 
paper and quietly stealing away to write his prayer. The thought- 
ful expression shown was indicative of true, earnest effort. " 

The following are the prayers as they were 
written. 

Dear Father in heaven, 

Thou hast tought us to love and honor thee. If we go your 
way we will always be doing right. We hope we are doing 
better every day. We try to repay you but all we can do is to 
be good and help others. Oh heavenly father we are not half 
so good as you but if we try and honor you you wtfll help us. 
You have given us our homes, our friends our food. Every- 
thing we have has come from your store of bounty us gifts. Oh! 
heavenly father we will try to do better in the future, so that we 
can show our gratefullness to you. Amen. 



The Results of Worship 103 

O heavenly father our hearts are full of thankfulness, For 
our food our clothes our home and friends. We make mistakes 
and great sins. We forget that we are living in this world that 
God has given it to us. But God is still forgiving to us always 
and helping us. Please forgive our sins and make our friends 
happy. Amen. 

Some people try to pray but do not know how for they have 
not been to church so we thy children are trying to teach the 
people about your goodness. 

Oh, Lord we do a good many wrongs in a day. but you are kind 
and tender and you forgive us And we must try to do better, 
and we must keep on trying And we will keep on trying for you 
are in us, and helping us all of the time. 

Our Father who art in heaven we thank thee for all the things 
thou doest for us. We thank thee for the fruits, the flowers, the 
waters and trees. Everything is yours. 

We try to please you by loving and helping others. 

Our father in heaven, day by day are we wronging thee, in 
many ways Sometimes we are angry, sometimes selfish; but 
always art thou kind and forgiving. Help us, then, our father, 
to be better and more willing, every day, that we may be more 
like him who died for us long ago. Amen. 
Now I wake to see the light, 

I pray the Lord to guide me right, 
In all I do and think and say, 

I pray the Lord to guide my way. Amen. 

Father in Heaven we thank Thee for all the things Thou hast 
given us. Thou hast been so good to us. Always helpful, happy, 
never tell lies, not steal, or not bad will help us in this world to 
have another Heaven. Father help us to do these things so we 
may be with You when we leave this world. We ask in your 
name, Amen. 

Our father who art in heaven. 
We thank thee for all thou hast done for us. 
When we do wrong you are always ready to forgive. 
May we work with thee to spread thy kingdom of Tightness 
through all the earth. 
13 



194 Worship in the Sunday School 

Our father which art in heaven. Freely dost thou give us 
all things. Thou our father, watches over us night and day, 
darkness makes no difference with thee. 

Help us, while life is ours, to do good, and help other people 
to do good. May we ever honor thee and Christ. May we help 
thee convert the people that don't believe you and Christ. Amen. 

Our father who art in heaven 

We thank you for the many things you have brought us. 

Thou art glad when we do right 

Thou art the friend of every living thing. Amen. 

Our Heavenly Father we thank Thee for Thy many blessings 
and for everything that is ours. 

May we spread Thy kingdom of goodness and happiness through 
all the earth and may we make the world a little better than it 
would have been if we had never been in it. Amen. 

It is remarkable how these two sets of prayers 
seem to incorporate the spirit and the ideas of the 
Periods so far passed through. Penitence is a fre- 
quent mood here, and is a natural, spontaneous 
application of the positive emphasis of the services, 
which rarely introduced the idea of penitence. And 
best of all, these prayers are truly Christian; to these 
children God is in a very real sense their Heavenly 
Father. 

If a general statement concerning the effects of 
the services on the feelings and ideas of the pupils 
may be ventured, it is that there is sufficient evidence 
to indicate: 

(1) That the services have helped pupils in every 
grade, from the first to the eighth, either in respect 
to attitude, or to idea, or to both. 



The Results of Worship 195 

(2) That development of the first two attitudes 
and probably of the third occurred in some pupils 
of every grade which reported. 

(3) That some pupils in every grade showed growth 
in their understanding of one attitude, or another. 

(4) That most of the pupils who, in the tests, 
did not manifest any change, already understood 
the idea. 

(5) That the failure of some of the tests to indi- 
cate changes in the idea is no conclusive proof of 
the failure of the services. 

The Spirit of the Services 

Professor G. A. Coe, who has been Chairman of 
the Supervisory Committee in charge of the School 
since it was reorganized, has contributed the fol- 
lowing observations upon the worship. 

"The experiment in worship that was started by this school 
in the autumn of 1910 has included the following factors : 

"1. Common worship of the whole school (with exception of 
the Kindergarten, which attends only about once a month) as 
distinguished from graded worship by departments. 

"2. Hence, an endeavor to employ only such material as 
appeals to universal sentiments. We have excluded, on the one 
hand, child-hymns and child-prayers, and on the other hand, 
hymns and prayers that turn upon adult interest in dogma, or 
upon peculiarly adult experience and crises. Child-hymns and 
child-prayers are used, however, in some of the classes separately. 

"3. The unsparing, though regulated use of stimuli of a high 
order — a gothic chapel, organ music of excellent quality, the 
procession — together with careful attention to form, and exclusion 
of distractions such as the giving of notices and speech-making. 

"4. Constant endeavor to avoid separation between feeling 



196 Worship in the Sunday School 

and idea. Hence the regular inclusion of instruction, whether by 
story or talk from the Principal, by specially prepared common 
prayers, or by discussion of the meaning of a hymn or other act 
of worship. 

"5. Avoidance of formalism, both by developing thoughtful- 
ness through the means just described, and by varying the service. 
The passages of Scripture, always recited from memory; the mem- 
orized prayers; the sentence by the choir of children; the order 
and plan of the service — all these change occasionally. Now and 
then, moreover, an entirely new, often unexpected, item appears, 
as an anthem by the choir, an organ solo, or a vocal solo. Finally, 
the great Christian festivals, the seasonal changes, and national 
occasions receive recognition. 

"6. Cooperation on the part of teachers in their respective 
classes •. Here the meanings of the worship have been discussed, 
and the pupils have been drilled in hymns, prayers, and Scripture 
that require memorization. During the present season this coop- 
eration has been so perfect that new common prayers, and even 
general changes in the order of service have been introduced 
without a hitch, and with full participation on the part of the 
pupils, though the coming changes had never been mentioned in 
the service itself. 

"7. Through all this planning runs a design that the pupils 
themselves shall worship rather than witness worship, and that 
their worship shall be social, — the act of individuals, indeed, but 
of individuals conscious of one another as a school. 

" Having been a careful observer of these services from the out- 
set, but not a participant in the conduct of them, I am, perhaps, 
in a position to form a judgment concerning the immediate re- 
sponse of the pupils, that is, their reaction during the service 
itself. It is clear to me that what I call the worship-situation 
has presented itself to the pupils as real, not artificial. Their 
response, that is, is a response to the elements of the service 
itself, not to something else that is merely associated with it. 
Of course the attention of the youngest pupils is often attracted 
to the externals of the service rather than to the content of it. 
Yet, even including these pupils, I am certain of the religious 



The Results of Worship 197 

vitality of the response. Extraneous motives have been avoided; 
nothing outside worship has been used to make worship attrac- 
tive. Further, the element of mere drill has been kept at the 
lowest possible point — a point so low that our only doubt has 
been whether we have not gone to an extreme in the direction of 
freedom. Nevertheless, the whole conduct of the pupils during the 
worship has been, with rare exceptions, attentive, reverent, and 
obviously pleasurable. We have still to determine the relative 
responsiveness of the different grades — a complicated problem — 
but there is abundant reason to assert that the group maintains 
a good degree of unity, and that the twenty minutes of worship 
are minutes of happy self-expression. 

"A peculiar item of evidence that this response is directed to 
the elements of the service and not to anything extraneous is as 
follows: During the season of 1911-12 it was the custom of 
Mr. Stowell, the Principal, to introduce his story or talk with 
questions directed to the pupils. As children of certain grades 
readily undertook to answer these questions, there came into the 
service an element of surprise and expectancy which the Princi- 
pal was able to use as a means of control. During the present 
season, Principal Hartshorne has dispensed with such question- 
ing. The worship, as a consequence, has been more solemn, and 
it has called for more sustained attention from the pupils. Yet 
their attentiveness has not decreased; if anything, it has increased. 

"The conclusion to which I come is that the school really 
worships, and that we are therefore ready for the further question 
whether the immediate response here noted extends or can be 
made to extend into subsequent conduct." 

The Chorister, Mr. Irving M. Anderson, estimates 
the worship as follows : 

"Is the service in the chapel at the opening of the weekly 
session of the Union School of Religion cultivating in the pupils 
a spirit of worship? I am attempting to answer this question by 
stating certain objective facts which I have observed in the 
attitude of the pupils during the service as well as immediately 



198 Worship in the Sunday School 

before it. In estimating the bearing of these facts upon the 
answer to the question, it is to be borne in mind that the material 
used and the acts performed are those of worship. The observa- 
tions are as follows: 

" 1. As the members of the choir are passing through the cloister 
on the way to the chapel, they engage in lively, sometimes noisy, 
conversation. When the procession reaches the vestibule, how- 
ever, laughing and talking suddenly cease and quietness and 
attention take their place. 

"2. The singing of the processional and recessional hymns is 
characterized by an orderly demeanor. The present chorister has 
never found it necessary to reprove members of the choir for dis- 
order during the singing of the processional hymn; and during the 
singing of the recessional, not more than two or three times. 

"3. During the rest of the service the order is usually good, 
seldom calling for reproof. The order of the pupils seated in the 
pews is beyond criticism. I have never seen the slightest indica- 
tion of disorder among any of the classes. 

"4. The several parts of the service hold the attention of the 
pupils well. During the telling of a brief story, which is usually 
one of the features of the service, the pupils give especially good 
attention. The interest of the younger pupils in particular is 
clearly shown in the eager, attentive look of their faces. 

"5. The participation of the children in the portions of the 
service in which they are expected to take part is general and 
hearty, depending principally upon their familiarity with the 
material of expression. The great care taken in the preparation 
of prayers and in the selection of psalms and hymns to include 
only such material as the pupils can be expected to repeat as the 
expression of their own experience is reflected in the heartiness of 
their response. 

" It seems to me, therefore, that all of the points which I have 
mentioned tend to sustain an affirmative answer to our question. 
I believe that we are justified in saying that the pupils of the 
Union School of Religion, during the weekly service in the chapel, 
enter into the spirit of worship." 



CHAPTER IX 
CONCLUSIONS 

Guiding Principles for the Planning and 
Conduct of Sunday-School Worship 

It would appear then that the main contribution 
of this whole discussion lies in the construction of 
services on the plans laid out in Chapter VII, in 
accordance with definite psychological laws and for 
a definite purpose. Yet it has seemed helpful to 
bring to the support of the practice there described 
such evidence of results as the nature of the case 
permitted. This evidence was collected for only 
a part of the series described, but it is sufficient to 
add confidence to the pursuance of the same method 
in the rest of the series or in any services of similar 
type. 

If the results indicate any danger in the method, 
it may perhaps be that of failing to make instruction 
broad enough and definite enough. Both of these 
limitations, if they exist, could be overcome easily 
if the services were more frequent or if instruction 
in an attitude, whether consecutive or interrupted, 
could extend over many more Sundays. 

With the preceding chapters in mind, the follow- 
ing principles are formulated for the construction 
of a service of worship which can take a vital place in 
the Christian education of children. 

199 



200 Worship in the Sunday School 

I. The service should make real and concrete the 
content of the Christian purpose. This is of course 
a corollary of the underlying aims of religious edu- 
cation which were suggested in Chapter I. 

II. It should afford training in worship by giving 
the children an opportunity to participate in a ser- 
vice which they can understand and appreciate. 
That is, the service should have the children actually 
reach at least the beginning of the experience of 
worship described in Chapters II and VI. 

III. The service should afford training through 
worship in the fundamental attitudes which religious 
education expects to develop in the children. The 
most important of these attitudes were analyzed in 
Chapter IV, namely, Gratitude, Goodwill, Rever- 
ence, Faith and Loyalty. 

IV. The attitudes which it is desired to develop 
should be made concrete and given a well-understood 
ideational content. They should also be defined in 
relation to the Christian purpose. 

V. This implies definite instruction in the form of 
story, talk, prayer, and so on. 

VI. In order to make certain of actual changes in 
feeling-attitudes, the service must be constructed 
in accordance with the psychology of feeling and 
emotion, outlined in Chapters V and VI in its rela- 
tion to education and worship. Certain useful 
principles emerge from that discussion. 



Conclusions 201 

1. The atmosphere should be one of pleasure or 
joy, in order that the direction given to thought and 
action may have a firm neural organization from 
the vitalizing effect of satisfaction as well as from repe- 
tition, and in order to associate the attitude with 
the sense of conviction. 

2. This involves the use of suitable music, and 
the general esthetic organization of the service. 

3. There should be abundant opportunity for ex- 
pression on the part of the pupils, both in the service 
and after it. This involves the use of common 
prayers, hymns, psalms, and occasions for making 
concrete expressions of gratitude, goodwill, and so on. 

4. In the instructional aspect of the service es- 
pecially, but in the rest of the service as well, the 
following principles apply: 

(1) The subject may be presented in such a way 
as to stir the emotions of the children sufficiently to 
arouse an old mood or to permit the establishment 
of a new one. 

(2) The mood or attitude aimed at may be con- 
nected with such experiences as already are associ- 
ated with that mood. 

(3) Or it may be made attractive and connected 
with ideas and experiences already found to be 
attractive. 

(4) It should be presented in a situation which 
the children will follow to the extent of identifying 
their own will with the attitude desired. 



202 Worship in the Sunday School 

VII. Participation in the expression of feeling and 
idea should be as general as possible for the sake of 
its effect on the socializing of the individual will. 

VIII. This involves the careful adaptation of the 
service — psalms, hymns, prayers and stories — to 
pupils of all ages. 

IX. The attitudes must be approved by the hearty 
cooperation of leaders and teachers in the service of 
worship. 

In the progress of the discussion certain points 
have been emphasized which may perhaps be re- 
garded as contributing something to the theory of 
worship. In Chapter I the attempt was made to 
indicate that individual leadership has been as in- 
fluential as the "social consciousness " in determining 
the development of the forms and values of worship. 
This brings out the prominence of the individual 
in the control of religious ceremonies. This sug- 
gests, in Chapter IV, the leader's responsibility to 
the community for the purposes and results of wor- 
ship in the Sunday school. Although the general 
function of Sunday-school worship has been stated 
elsewhere in terms of feeling and attitude, no very 
definite formulation of such attitudes seems to have 
been made. In Chapter IV, therefore, a statement 
of the purpose of worship in terms of specific Chris- 
tian attitudes is proposed, and these are analyzed 
in terms of social situations and responses which 
give the attitudes a Christian significance. 



Conclusions 203 

In Chapter VI it is suggested that public worship 
and mysticism, while similar in the psychological 
processes involved, differ from each other in such 
ways as these: (1) Public worship is social; mysticism 
tends to be individualistic. (2) Public worship at- 
tempts to bring the individual to the freedom of 
rational self-control and divine cooperation; mysti- 
cism seeks freedom through submission to external 
control and divine authority. And finally, in Chap- 
ter VIII, a possible method for testing the effects 
of worship is proposed and carried out. 

This tentative study of worship in its relation 
to the Sunday school may serve to point out the way 
to more adequate experimenting and investigation 
in this field. The author dares to hope that it may 
also prove of some practical use to those who are 
already wrestling with the difficult problems of 
planning and conducting services of worship for 
children. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Books or articles to which explicit reference has 
been made are marked with a dagger. Books or ar- 
ticles of especial use to Sunday-school workers are 
starred. 

Theory and Practice of Education 

Adler, Felix. Moral Education of Children. 1892. 
Baldwin, J. M. Social and Ethical Interpretations. 1902. 
t* Butler, N. M. The Meaning of Education. 1909. 
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1909. 
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Horne, H. H. The Philosophy of Education. 1906. 

* James, William. Talks to Teachers. 1905. 
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f* MacVannel, J. A. Outline of a Course in the Philosophy 
of Education. 1912. 
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* O'Shea, M. V. Social Development and Education. 1909. 
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1908. 

* Peabody, F. G. Jesus Christ and the Social Question. 

1901. 

. The Approach to the Social Question. 1909. 

Sadler, M. E. Moral Instruction and Training in Schools. 

1910. 

* Strayer, G. D. A Brief Course in the Teaching Process. 

1912. 

204 



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f Suzzallo, Henry. Introduction to "Moral Principles in 

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t Webster, H. Primitive Secret Societies. 1908. 
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Practice. 1907. 

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A. 1913. 
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206 Worship in the Sunday School 

f* Gatty, Mrs. Margaret. Parables from Nature, 
t Harker, R. C. The Work of the Sunday School. 1911. 
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World, Jan., 1908, p. 42. 
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VITA 

Hugh Hartshorne, born November 13, 1885, in 
Lawrence, Massachusetts. Academic Diploma, Me- 
thuen High School. A.B., Amherst College. M.A. 
and B.D., Yale University. George E. Day Fellow 
of Yale Divinity School, 1911-1913. Principal of 
the Union School of Religion, 1912-1913. 

Student in Union Theological Seminary and in 
Teachers College, 1911-1913. 



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